Satan was in the Garden. This devotional reading looks at how he tempted the woman to sin.
Nuggets
- But the woman’s answer wasn’t exactly correct.
- Of course, Satan had a comeback — another misdirect.
In the last devotion, we set the scene for the original sin. Satan entered the garden and started questioning the woman.
This appears to be the first time that the woman was tempted. How did she react?
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the Celebrating Creation’s Story series
She Said
“‘Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,’ the woman replied. ‘It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, “You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die’”” (Gen. 3: 2-3 NLT)
But the woman’s answer wasn’t exactly correct.
The woman was going on about her business, planning on obeying God. Then this snake popped up and blindsided her. She probably thought she was working and worshiping, and here came this temptation.
No, the woman didn’t get up that morning and plan on disobeying God.
In fact, the woman probably didn’t know what sin was. She may or may not have really understood what obedience was.
Don’t we do that? We think living and going to church is enough. We don’t recognize the need to make a choice.
It doesn’t help that Satan disguises sin as delicious-looking fruit — or whatever other thing that we will find attractive. He will use anything and anyone to tempt us.
Don’t get me wrong. The command in Genesis 2: 17 clearly lists the consequence of sin — death. But if death is some sort of nebulous concept out there, is it really a deterrent?
Maybe. Maybe not.
The knowledge that there would be a punishment if she did eat the fruit should have been some deterrent. We don’t have to understand all the consequences to know that something bad is going to happen when God point blank tells us what to do.
No, God doesn’t have to spell out every consequence fully. All He should need to say is, “Obey Me.”
Yeah, God can say, “Because I said so.”
Our love for God should be an even bigger deterrent for sin. We love Him so much we want to do what He says.
The Protoplast said something interesting. He wrote, “So long as the creature’s love for God was perfect, the first law remained unbroken …”
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Well, yes and no. I can see that for the couple since they were still as they were created — perfect.
But can we rely alone on our love for God? When our love for God is strong, we won’t sin; but love alone is not going to stop us from sinning in this lifetime.
We will only be strong enough to not sin when we have been perfected. We won’t be perfected until we are called home or the end of the age.
Loving God doesn’t stop us from sinning. It didn’t stop the woman. It doesn’t stop us.
Too many disciples, though, think that loving God is good enough. Nothing else is needed for salvation.
But there is something else. We have to choose to obey God daily. That is how we show God we love Him.
- “So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth” (I Jn. 1: 6 NLT).
- “Then he said to the crowd, ‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me’” (Lk. 9: 23 NLT).
Some sermons I looked at said that the couple were not together here at the woman’s temptation. I can see that. In Genesis 3: 1-3, the serpent addressed the woman alone.
It is easy to think that the man wasn’t there. It is easier for Satan to talk us into a sin when we are by ourselves.
Satan didn’t want them to double-team him. He didn’t want to have to convince both at the same time. One may have convinced the other not to bite.
Plus, Satan may have thought the woman would cave before the man did. Maybe it could have been better if the man would have been there to talk her out of it. More on that later.
Moses said differently, however. “… Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too” (Gen. 3: 6 NLT).”
It doesn’t say the woman went to the other side of the Garden, to their home, or to wherever the man was working. Yes, that might have been scriptural shorthand not adding in unneeded clarification.
But we generally have to take God’s Word literally. God isn’t going to not say what He means. He spells it out enough for us to take the rest on faith.
Whether alone or in a group, Satan looks for our weakest area and starts attacking that. Really, he tries to tempt us while we are still milk babies. He especially doesn’t want us to grow to be steak adults.
In a way, it does seem like the woman hesitated when faced with the temptation. The woman did try to set up a defense. But she didn’t get it exactly right.
Look at the command that was given. “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Gen. 2: 16-17 ESV).
The woman didn’t say anything about eating freely from all the other trees. God didn’t say anything about not touching this one tree.
Aren’t we like that? We zero in on the negative and downplay the positive.
But then, the woman hadn’t been created yet in Genesis 2: 16-17. She was presented to the man in Genesis 2: 22.
God may not have been the one to tell her of the law (but I doubt that). The man may have been the one to add the no-touching part.
Whoever added it, both still had to execute said law the way God said it.
But don’t we do that? We put something even more off limits to give ourselves some wiggle room.
In doing that, we make it even more inviting. Talk about backfiring! We set ourselves up for failure.
Look what the woman said, the punishment was in the King James Version. “… Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die” (Gen. 3: 3 KJV).
To me, lest you die means you run the risk of dying – but maybe not.
That is not what God said. He said, “… you shall surely die” (Gen. 2: 17 ESV).
Ooo, baby. Do we really think God is going to like us making the punishment for the sin wishy washy? Especially the first one????
No. God wants us to know exactly what is going to happen to us. Why do you think we got the Book of Revelation????
Oh, do we think we can live our lives disobeying God, and He is going to say, “Oh, well. Everyone can come to Heaven.”
Not going to happen.
“Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved. But anyone who refuses to believe will be condemned” (Mark 16: 16 NLT).
We have to take God’s every word to be gospel truth – because it is. God is going to do what He says He will.
By the way, these verses talk about the tree of knowledge of good and evil producing fruit. It doesn’t say that the fruit is an apple. It doesn’t say it is a peach or a cherry. It may have been a pomegranate for all we know.
What kind it was is not the focus. The focus is on the disobedience of the woman. God told her not to eat it, and she did anyway.
We can learn from the woman’s sin.
We can’t question the goodness of God’s laws. We can’t look at it through the lens of our opinions.
God judges based on His laws through the lens of His character.
Melvill had an interesting observation. He thought that the woman was already having doubts about being obedient before Satan started in on her.
Resource
Maybe. We really don’t know.
A person can’t be pure and impure at the same time.
- “The righteous despise the unjust; the wicked despise the godly.” (Prov. 29: 27 NLT).
- “What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever?” (II Cor. 6: 15 NLT).
- “But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me” (Rom. 7: 23 NLT).
- “Let my tongue sing about your word, for all your commands are right” (Ps. 119: 172 NLT).
That means we need to seek God and grow closer to Him.
He Said
“‘You won’t die!’ the serpent replied to the woman. ‘God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil’” (Gen. 3: 4-5 NLT)
Of course, Satan had a comeback — another misdirect.
We can look at this two ways. The first way was, instead of correcting the woman’s error, Satan lied. He misrepresented the meaning of the words to make it look like God didn’t love them.
Satan had to know the law that God gave them, or he wouldn’t be tempting her if this didn’t lead to a sin.
Oh, Satan knew he was talking physical death while God was talking spiritual death. Did Satan even have a clue what physical death was? It had never happened before, and he isn’t all-knowing as God is.
I think we tend to forget Satan had been at this juncture before. He had a choice whether to obey God or not.
Satan chose not, but he was still alive and kicking. He just had a change of address.
While he didn’t physically die, Satan knew exactly what spiritual death meant.
What we may not see is that Satan is trying to question God’s motivations. He doesn’t want us to think God has our best interests at heart.
So, Satan lied about the consequences of disobeying God. But, then, he is a liar. “For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn. 8: 44 NLT).
Satan likes telling us that we can do whatever we want, and God won’t do anything — even if He said He would. He switches off from telling us, “You can’t depend on what He says” to “God just won’t require that of you.”
I wonder how much the woman really understood what death meant – nothing in her sphere had died yet. She might have had a preschooler’s understanding of death. Death was probably just a concept that was out there somewhere.
God may have explained the concept, but He may seem to be talking a different language. We don’t always understand until we experience something.
But you know, God doesn’t have to spell out every consequence fully. All He should need to say is, “Obey Me.”
Yeah, God can say, “Because I said so.”
It was kind of like the people had no concept of what rain was when Noah was building the ark. It hadn’t rained yet (Gen. 2: 5), so the threat posed by the restriction didn’t really appear to be a threat.
But the threat was real. And the woman gave into it.
The second way we can look at this is that Satan was encouraging the woman to want to be God. “Eat this, and you will be like Him.”
Maybe the woman thought — since the name of the tree was the tree of knowledge of good and evil — it would make her smarter.
But more than likely, the woman wanted to be like God. She wanted to make her own choices. She didn’t want Anyone to have control over her.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Some still try to do that.
Strong described it this way. He wrote, “Seeking to be a god, man became a slave; seeking independence, he ceased to be master of himself. In fine, man no longer made God the end of his life, but chose self instead.”
Resource
In other words, Satan wanted our sin to mirror his sin. The only way he could get that to happen was to convince the woman to think as he did. But he had no real facts to back up his lies.
The woman, if she already was doubting God, was a sitting duck.
Making the Connections #1
Okay, let’s step back a second. The tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil were both in the Garden of Eden.
The man and the woman were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge. There was no restriction on eating from the tree of life — until they ate from the tree of knowledge.
It reads like they didn’t eat from the tree of life — but they could have.
At the beginning stage of the Garden, God would have had no problem with them eating that fruit. They were made in God’s image. They would have been fine living for eternity.
If God would have had a problem with that, He would have put the tree of life off limits, too. He didn’t.
Everything happened as God allowed it to happen.
Making the Connections #2
We almost have to wonder if Satan had presented himself to the humans before. I mean, why did the woman just automatically believe someone she had never met before over Someone who had created her and had provided for her?
Satan’s insistence that what God has presented as good is really evil is heartbreaking. Portraying God as Someone Who can’t follow through on His promises or flat out promising something He has no intention of supplying is so totally out of character of God.
• God is love.
• God does what He says.
• God provides for our wellbeing.
Satan is really good at doing this. This is especially true when we realize that he works it so it isn’t his fault.
I bet Satan’s attitude is, “I can say whatever I want. It is up to you to decide if you are going to believe me and act on that belief.”
How many times do we realize that we look at circumstances through the lens of who we are? We filter things through what we believe to be true.
Satan does the same thing.
How Do We Apply This?
- Approach temptation as a child of God instead of as a child of flesh.
- Confront the temptation in virtue.
- Memorize Scripture passages word for word to have handy when we are being tempted.
- Don’t give Satan the opportunity of even a toe hold in our lives.
- Don’t be fooled by Satan’s lies.
- Be content in the place where God has put us.
- Recognize Satan tempts us through our pleasures and delights.
Resources
Father God. We know that temptation is not the sin. The sin is whether we follow what Satan is trying to get us to do. Strengthen us to withstand Satan’s temptation. Amen.
What do you think?
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