Clough Genesis Lesson 14
The origin of evil – Genesis 3:1-8
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There is no Christmas with Christ, there is no Christ without evil because Jesus Christ most and foremost is a Savior and a Savior has to save you from something, and that which Christ saves you from is sin and evil. And so Genesis 3 becomes very important to discuss the origin of evil; this is the roots and where did the roots of evil come from.
We are going to do three things: we are going to deal with the problem of the origin of evil and the kinds of foolish answers that men have given to that question; then we’re going to go to Genesis 3:1-8, study it carefully, watching for the ten aspects of evil contained therein, and finally conclude with two doctrines, the doctrine of imputed sin and the doctrine of inherent sin. All this is necessary that you can be oriented to the nature of evil. In our own generation we live in a time where people are naïve in the extreme toward evil. This can be shown a number of ways, it can be shown in the common thing that we all do to blame God for every evil thing that comes our way, it’s God’s fault, it’s never our responsibility, always God’s responsibility. And of course this is thinking in terms of a human viewpoint attitude toward evil.
Another place you can measure it is in modern’s man foolish schemes for dealing with the results of evil. You can look at the SALT negotiations and look on an international large scale when men are trying to disarm and both political parties are filled with people with this kind of foolish attitude toward evil, that evil can be done away with by disarmament. Now anybody that’s lived far in the 20th century knows that 1928 there was such a thing called the Kellog-Briand pact that was made between the United States, Great Britain and Japan in which it was exactly like the SALT Treaty, it was a limitation on tonnage to the area of the navy, and obviously as you know, 1941 was not stopped by the Kellog-Briand pact of 1928. And so just as the Kellog-Briand pact didn’t stop World War II so SALT is not going to stop World War III.
You cannot stop evil by disarming the good
people, it never works, and the same mentality carries to take away the guns
from all the law-abiding citizens, and then make sure that the mafia has all of
their weapons. This doesn’t solve the
problem of evil. Nor does it solve the
problem of evil when you get into the criminal justice system and you have some
character that murdered someone off in five years and someone else who cheated
on their income tax or something in for sixteen. We do not run that kind of a system that
truly meets the problem of evil. Nor can
it be seen in the area of psychotherapy, with someone who has the results of
evil because they have an evil mental attitude and they’re all screwed up
between the ears and because they are they wind up with $50 an hour psychotherapy
for two years and this is supposed to solve their problem. So we have silliness elevated to a national
scale because people do not understand the roots of evil and the nature of
evil.
So let’s look at the origin of evil and find out a little bit about it. For some of you this will be a review but good review. Evil has two ways of operating, or two ways of looking at it: one is the human viewpoint way and the other is the divine viewpoint way; this is God’s way, this is man’s way. Now man has various aspects, various ways he develops his ideas of evil. One of the most innovative was that developed by Mary Baker Patterson Glover Eddy whose solution was to ignore evil; evil was imaginary and it didn’t make any difference whether your arm was dropping off, if you felt a little pain that was imaginary. Of course Mrs. Eddy did have a little problem toward the end of her life in that she accepted morphine injections for pain that didn’t exist, she had her teeth out for pain that was nonexistent also. So I guess the rest of us can deal with nonexistent evil with anesthesia and so forth. So Mary Baker Patterson Glover Eddy’s solution and that of Christian Science basically failed.
Then we have a second thing, a little bit more popular where it’s not just as evil as imaginary but that evil is okay; that is, that it’s uncomfortable but it’s not morally wrong, and this is why, for example, if the Germans wanted to improve Germany in 1930 by making lampshades out of Jewish skin, that was okay because that was for the good of the nation. It goes today with the communists in South Vietnam who are massacring by tens and hundreds of thousands the Montagnards and other great tribes of South Vietnamese and marching into Cambodia and raping and pillaging and so forth, after all, it’s all for the good for the good of the development of southeast Asia. And it goes for the labor union people who like to take steel shavings and rub into the eyes of non-union laborers and if they want to do this, this is okay too, it’s for the good of the laboring worker. So that’s another answer to evil in our own generation, that is, that it’s uncomfortable but nevertheless it’s okay.
The third kind of answer that human viewpoint has given is that evil is there, that it is real, it’s not okay and we’ll just sit with it, and that’s called the solution of the Absurd, capital “A”, it’s the philosophy of existentialism, you’re just stuck with it, sorry; sorry, just live with it, live with the tension knowing that the world has this evil in it, knowing that the human heart has evil in it and it’s eradicable, can’t do anything about it so make the best of it. On practical levels this is shown in certain forms of psychotherapy; your life lacks a purpose, your wife lacks a meaning, okay that’s fine, just make one up off the top of your head. You’re dying of cancer and have horrible pain in your body and you need a purpose for living, fine, just make one up, any one will do. And so that’s the third answer to the problem of evil.
Now the Bible’s answer is totally different because the Bible goes to real historic space/time fall. And we can diagram the situation like this: here we have the Creator with the Word of God, and the Word of God is sovereign over everything and controls everything, but creation has an origin and has history to it, so we can come down to the present day and we have real creature cause/effect operating in history. Creatures are genuinely responsible for influencing the flow of history, yet outside of the process and connecting with every point in the process is the sovereignty of God. Now how this controls this without ruining this no one has yet discovered but it goes on all the time. And that is Christianity’s answer to the problem of evil, that evil came in at one point in time; when God finished making the world, when God finished creating and the world left His fingertips, it was “very good,” …very good, the Bible says in Genesis 1:31. And therefore if the world has become evil since creation it has become evil at some point in time, when Adam fell; there’s the introduction of sin, there’s the introduction of evil. And so this is why the orthodox Christian’s answer has always differed from the human viewpoint garbage of our competitors.
Now in order to develop our position of evil we must take a literal interpretation of Genesis 3 and in order to do a literal interpretation of Genesis 3 we have to have some reasons why we accept that there was a real Adam, there was a real Eve, and there was a real fall. Modern theology says ha-ha, it’s a sweet little myth, it sort of gives you the feeling that this is how it all started. Well, we’re not interested in feelings, we’re interested in facts. And the facts are that there was a historic fall and you can use at least three passages in the Bible to show that the rest of the Bible buys a literal fall and a literal Genesis 3. One passage is found in Ezekiel 28:15; Ezekiel 28:15 is where the prophet Ezekiel uses a literal Genesis to explain something that he’s dealing with in context with the King of Tyre. And he buys a literal Adam and a literal Eden with a literal fall. So if the passage is not to be interpreted literally you’ve got a problem with Ezekiel; you might as well throw Ezekiel out along with throwing Genesis 3 out.
And then we have the passage in Rom 5:12-14, “Whereas by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,” there we have Paul grounding a whole doctrine of Christian suffering on a literal interpretation of Genesis 3. Then we have 1 Corinthians 15:21 where Paul does the same thing, this time with the doctrine of resurrection and grounding it upon a literal Genesis 3. So wherever you turn in the Scriptures you will find there is a literal rendering of the Genesis 3 story. So we’re in good company when we say that evil begins with Genesis 3.
Now there are some who argue about when evil absolutely began, when, in other words, was the fall of Satan. And there are two places in the Bible for this; one place is between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, and the other between Genesis 2:25 and 3:1. Now at the beginning of the Genesis series I showed you why I accept the traditional position of Genesis 1:1 as the title and then Genesis 1:2 on down through with an unbroken chain as creation. This possibility exists that Satan fell before Genesis 1:2; I have a problem with it in that in Genesis 1:31 it says everything was good, and if everything was good and Satan had already fallen there is a problem, the only way you can get around it is reinterpret Genesis 1:31 so that we’re not pronouncing Satan fallen as “very good.” I prefer this solution, I’m not dogmatic about it, it’s not a question you can be dogmatic about it and people who are haven’t studied too carefully. If you want the details: Appendix C in Framework Pamphlet 2.
But whatever our position is, beginning in Genesis 3:1 we surely have evil existing. And it’s interesting that the Bible, emphasizing the origin of evil with man rather than origin of evil with the angelic group. Now the reason for this is the natural tendency on our part is to deny responsibility. You know this, I know this, and you know what would happen if God’s Word devoted a 400 page essay to the origin of evil in the angelic realm and a two sentence observation about the origin of evil in the human realm; you know what would happen, you and I both would then blame Satan for it, and Satan made me do it and the Lord did this and that and the other thing. So the Word of God emphasizes… there’s a whole passage in Genesis 3 on the origin of evil with man. That’s where the emphasis is placed in the Genesis narrative and that’s therefore where we will put our emphasis.
Now let’s look at the situation. The Genesis narrative at verse 1 is a narrative that goes on and uses a form that we spotted earlier in the Genesis text, so we want to look at this a little bit, pointing out the similarities for interpretation purposed. In Genesis 1:1-3 we have the introductory statement in verse 1, “In the beginning God created the cosmos,” or “the world.” And then in Genesis 1:2 we have a circumstantial clause which gives us the setting for the action in verse 3, “And God said.” So you’ve got the title, you’ve got the circumstantial clause and you’ve got the verb that connotes the main action. That’s the structure of Genesis 1:1-3.
In Genesis 2:4-7 we have the similar situation; we’ve got an introductory statement, “These are the” stories about man and the day when the heaven and the earth were created. And then in verses 5-6 we have the circumstantial clause; now no herb of the field was yet in the earth. And this gives the setting once again for the main verb which is God formed the man.
So watch how the author does the same thing here in Genesis 3, he gives us an introductory summary back in Genesis 2:4. The circumstantial clause is, “Now the serpent was more subtle than any other beast of the field,” and the main action, “And he said to the woman.” Well what does this all tell us? It tells us the thought on the mind of the author. And we can make an inference or a deduction from this that in this author’s mind the two most important events of Genesis 2:4 on to the end of chapter 4 are: (1) the creation of man, and (2) the origin of evil with the serpent coming to the woman. Those are the two events he emphasizes and he draws out attention to it, not by underling because you couldn’t underline the ancient Hebrew, so there’s only one way you can emphasize in the ancient Hebrew and that is to emphasize grammatically, which is what he did.
So let’s look at the details and see how the serpent is set up here. [Genesis 3:1] “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field.” The word “subtle” is a word that means wise, skilled, and immediately, if this is a prototype of sin, this is a warning to you and to me that at the very first evil was not simple. Evil never appears simple in the Bible, it is always complicated, it is always subtle. So this is teaching you something; evil isn’t obvious. And if you think you’ve got it all pinned down about where the boundaries of evil are, you are mistaken because evil is more subtle and it’s harder to pin down where exactly the boundaries are. The serpent is the most subtle beast of the field; notice the same idiomatic expression as in Genesis 2:19, the kinds of animals that would have been in a field. Not all animals, just the field animals of rural countryside; those are the ones that had been created in verse 19 and were brought to Adam.
Now in this verse the serpent, we don’t know what he looked like because his form was changed, whether he was an upright animal or what, but the serpent is very, very wise, meaning he probably was the (quote) highest (end quote) of the animal realm. And the serpent was apparently indwelt by Satan, I know there are people today who argue that the serpent and Satan are different; nonsense. Satan’s name in Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20:3 is called the “old serpent.” And in Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 it’s obviously looking back to the serpent when he first appeared. So if that’s the case, then Satan is identified with the serpent and based on other Scriptures, like Luke 8:33, which shows very clearly that demons can indwell invertebrate animals because they have a highly developed central nervous system, therefore you can have demon possession and this is the first case of demonic possession in history, where Satan infiltrated the serpent, animal, and then he began his attack.
To make this attack clear and to show you the subtlety of the evil we are going to break the attack down in ten increments. There are going to be ten separate and distinct increments in Satan’s attack on the woman, and her yielding to it and man’s response to it. Our purpose is not to confuse but to clarify, to take it very slowly so you can watch the principles operate. And if you’ll watch these principles operate I’ll think you’ll agree intuitively you’ve experienced every one of these yourself; it just takes us time so we can slow the process down so we take time to look at all the details. Let’s watch.
[Genesis 3:1] “…And he said unto the woman, Yea, has God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” The first increment or the first stage of sin deals with the Word of God. Some of you may never have thought of this but have you realized that you can’t have sin without the sin, that you’ve got to have the Word of God first or there cannot be sin, because sin by definition is a violation of the Word; it’s a violation of what God has declared man to do. And so therefore notice something; the Word of God was given in Genesis 2:16-17, we might just quickly reread those verses; get the vocabulary in your mind again. “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may eat.
[17] But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat thereof you will certainly die.” Now those are two verses out of Adam and Eve’s personal testament. They had their own little Bible and it wasn’t the whole Old Testament, it was just a few verses. But they had those two verses.
Now watch; in Genesis 3:1 there’s one of the verses occurring, it’s quoted, Satan quotes it. In verse 2 it’s discussed again; in verse 3 it’s discussed again; in verse 4 it’s discussed; in verse 5, and by way of implication verse 6. So the first six out of the eight verses deal with the debate and an argument and a fight over a piece of Scripture. Therefore, the first stage of sin is that you must have the Word of God declared and known. Now this has all sorts of interesting implications. It means that no man can be held responsible if they haven’t been told, and this is the answer to what about the heathen who have never heard; they must have heard something because God is going to judge all men. You don’t read in the Bible God is only going to judge some men; God is going to judge every man, every woman, and the implication is that therefore every man and every woman must have heard something of the Word of God, enough to render them responsible or God wouldn’t judge them. And so sin operates after the Word of God gets known; sin cannot operate in a revelation neutrality. It’s got to operate in defiance to; sin is active defiance of the revealed will of God. All right; now, sins of ignorance came on later in history.
And so “he said to the woman, “has God said?” This is the second stage of sin, and this is the key to where the evil began. In the Hebrew it starts out with this kind of an expression, aph kiy; aph kiy is s ort of a conjunction, it’s just kind of hard to translate it; what it means is it connotes surprise; if we were to dramatize this we’d have this spooky serpent talking to this girl on the stage and he’d say you mean God has really said that? That’s the way you’d translate it. You mean God said that? Oh no, God wouldn’t have said something like that. Or, I’m surprised that God said something like that. That’s what we mean by the surprise element; it’s an insinuation against the moral character of God. And by prefixing his remark with aph kiy he attacks the character of God; God has no right to say this kind of thing is what he’s saying to the woman. So right here, the second stage of sin is the temptation to become the absolute spiritual authority, the absolute moral judge. That’s where evil begins. What he is tempting Eve to do is to make God’s Word pass under her yoke. And anything that passes under Eve’s yoke is okay and if Eve doesn’t like it, it’s not okay. In other words, Eve has final say whether or not she is going to obey God’s Word. Eve, then, becomes her own absolute judge and if God’s Word meets her specifications then, and only then, will obedience be rendered. In other words, man becomes the absolute judge of the Word.
Now this has interesting implications also. This means when we look around where we get this attitude… we’re talking here, by the way, of autonomy. That’s what autonomy is, the idea that I am going to be the final judge of what is said. Now when you and I use this term in usual conversation we say hey, use your head will you, or use your judgment, use common sense. That’s not necessarily autonomy. When we say hey, use your head, we mean there’s a set of principles that the guy has between his ears that he’s supposed to apply to something. In other words, he has already lived partly off of the revealed real world, got general revelation stored in there, he’s got some special revelation, now use it. Now that’s the context we normally use: use your head, or, use your judgment.
But at the beginning this wasn’t the case; here Satan is telling the woman, you exercise total judgment, and don’t you ever obey God unless you think God meets what you think He ought to do. Now it doesn’t require too much imagination to see where this occurs around us. You can go into the educational system and you can watch autonomy elevated to an art. 80% of our public education is autonomous in spirit. It doesn’t mean it’s wholly human viewpoint, it’s got some good things, facts are facts in some areas, even the interpretation of those facts are areas where they might even broach divine viewpoint, but the spirit behind the whole process is autonomous.
Let me try to illustrate: do you or don’t you believe that you’ve got to refer to the Bible before you add 2 and 2 equals 4? Is 2 + 2 = 4 neutral? If you think that way you’re autonomous. Or do we structure even mathematics upon a Scriptural base; we insist that 2 + 2 = 4 equals two different things to the Christian and the non-Christian; that 2 + 2 = 4 means one thing to the non-Christian, it means totally something else to the Christian. And there is no neutrality, even in arithmetic, between the Christian and the non-Christian. And so this being so, then there’s no area of neutrality and so therefore I must start in either defiance of God’s Word or in submission to God’s Word, whatever the subject may be… whatever the subject may be. Now the educational process… no, that’s not so; what we are going to do in the public classroom is we are going to create neutrality and we’re going to teach all the students from all the religions all the same way; 2 + 2 means the same thing to the Hindu; 2 + 2 means the same thing to the Moslem, 2 + 2 means the same thing to the Christian. That’s the axiom; it’s called the postulate of neutrality; that is the base for our educational system. And that way, that’s an autonomous spirit, and the Christian teacher is in a very bad bind if she teaches in the public system because the system feeds on autonomy, and if you break against the spirit you find out how quickly professionally popular you are with the authority. And you can tell it’s a religious issue because they’ll let you do anything you want to except violate this one sacred cow of the whole system; if you dare to say that everything is contingent on the Bible, in every subject, how long would you last professionally in the system?
So there’s an example of the autonomous spirit operating. And you could go into various professions the same way. Can you imagine someone writing a paper, a technical paper for a scientific journal of great repute saying that this shows the design of God and at the end of the paper sign, like Bach did when he finished composing his music, “to the glory of Christ.” Think that would be accepted for publication in any professional journal you know of? None that I know of; that’s because they’re guided by an autonomous spirit that refuses to recognize the King of Kings as the King of Kings.
So we live submerged in a sea of autonomy and that’s why it’s so important to read this text carefully and detect the tone of this quiet firm voice of Satan to Eve… has God said such a thing as that, Eve? In other words, Eve, you are a bigger and better judge than God is; you can’t trust this God guy, we’ve got to back Him up with a little help.
I’ll give you another example; maybe it’ll be closer at home than education. Let’s take the average legalist; there’s a good one. See, God’s standards in the Bible aren’t enough for the legalist. He’s got to add something. God’s standards are, for example, that we serve wine in communion; but we have some people who’d just die of a heart attack if we ever served wine in the communion… oh, that’s not Scriptural. Show me! Jesus did not make Kool-Aid in John 2; it was very good wine, it was delicious wine, it was meant to be enjoyed and when Jesus Christ used wine in the communion He didn’t use grape juice, don’t go that route. The Jewish people, for years, have used diluted wine in their communion, in their Passover. And that’s the way it was and they accurately reflect the real truth but we have a few American fundies that oh, we can’t allow that, we’ve got to brace up God’s standards, God’s standards aren’t strong enough for us, so we’ll add. God says don’t get drunk, but we’ll improve what God says and we’ll say I am an absolute teetotaler. God’s standards are one thing but we have to add our little abomination. And God has all sorts of standards and as a pastor I have to watch this in the flock; people always bringing new legalisms in; it always happens. Somebody has their baby born a certain way, now every mother, to be a Christian mother, has to have her baby born a certain way. Or we have to do something else, some women have to work part time during the week and God doesn’t say anything; in fact in Proverbs 31 the woman works; no problem as long as she maintains management of her home while she’s doing it. And we have oh, it’s a sin for any Christian mother to work. Show me, I dare you; show me from the Scriptures where that’s said. Read Proverbs 31 for example. And so we have that little legalism that develops. The only way you can respond to this is just defy it. I’ve gotten criticism because my wife works two nights a week, and if it keeps up I’ll have her work three nights a week. That’s just the way I answer it; nobody is going to push me around and tell me when my wife is going to work and not work; that’s my business. So I’m just putting everybody on notice, my wife is my business and if you have anything to say about her, like some of you are over the telephone, you come to me face to face; you shut your mouth about my wife.
So let’s go back to Genesis 3 and deal more with some Scriptural principles. The third stage of evil is given in Genesis 3:2-3, “And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; [3] But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Now look what has happened; three things to notice in this verse that prove the point that the woman has been deceived. And so this is the third stage—deception. After we elevate ourselves to become moral judges we’re so good and we’ve got our high standards and we’re going to supplement what God says, then we lead to a deceived idea of reality. There are three things I want you to notice in verses 2-3 that show Eve has just… she’s gone right down the tube, right here. Somewhere between verse 1 and verse 2 she had it and it’s just a course of time for her to play out and actually reach up there and grab the fruit.
First of all, in Genesis 3:2, “We may eat of the tree,” now I call this buying the question; that’s just my term. By “buying the question” I mean this: somebody feeds you a question and you accept the question without analyzing, hey, wait a minute, is this the right question I ought to be asking? Maybe not, because Satan has deliberately done several things to her. First of all, when he asks her the question, notice he says “Ye shall not eat?” Now in the old King James they had a way of distinguishing between singular and plural. “Ye” and “thee;” “ye” means both of you, Adam, your husband and you. So what Satan has done in verse 1 and reflected in Eve’s answer in verse 2 is he’s tempted her to become the spokesman for both of them. So he, right away he’s violated the husband’s authority in the home and he’s got her even talking in terms of it—well, we may eat of this, and we may not do this; now suddenly she abrogates to herself she is the spokesman. And I’ll show you a shocking preposition later on in the text that may alter one of our favorite views here of what’s going on, it’ll increase this factor but for now just notice the fact that Eve is talking for both of them. She has taken over spiritual leadership of the situation.
Now that is remembered in 1 Timothy 2 and that’s why Paul says Eve was deceived but Adam transgressed. And what he’s arguing for there is that the serpent just led the woman right down the primrose path and her husband was standing there watching it and didn’t do a darn thing about it. And later on consented to it and actually said okay, that’s fine. So there was an actual reversal of the roles right here in verse 2.
The second thing that happened is in verse 3 notice what she calls God; she calls Him God or Elohim. Now there are two words in the Hebrew for God; one is Elohim and it’s usually translated in the King James as God, and the other is Jehovah, usually translated LORD, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, not little, no caps. In verse 3 Eve refers to her Creator as Elohim. Who put her up to that? Verse 1. Verse 1 has “Has God said?” Satan called God Elohim. Now you say well, what’s wrong with calling God Elohim? This is where our book division comes in handy. Go back to Genesis 2:4, it’s true in Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3 God is called just Elohim, Elohim, Elohim, Elohim, Elohim, Elohim, Elohim, but what happened with the author of Genesis 2:4? What do you notice God being called there in verse 4? “LORD God.” What do you see God called in verse 5? “LORD God.” Verse 7, “LORD God.” Verse 8, “LORD God.” Verse 9, “LORD God.” Verse 15, “LORD God.” Verse 16, “LORD God.” Verses 18, “LORD God.” Verse 19, “LORD God.” Verse 21, “LORD God.” Verse 22, “LORD God.” Genesis 3:1, the first part, “LORD God,” and who is it that changes the name? Satan. Do you know why? Because Jehovah, or LORD, comes from the Hebrew word to be; Yahweh, and remember what we said, where God showed this name, He came in the burning bush to Moses and Moses looked at the burning bush and from out of the burning bush came this voice, and the voice said I am Jehovah and I was not known by this name to the patriarchs. Now Abraham knew of Jehovah, the name, but he really didn’t appreciate what that name meant. What the name means is: I AM with you in your fiery trials; I AM with you, I AM the one who is always with you, I AM. And that’s God’s name, “I AM.” And it means the deep personal relationship that He has with people. Now isn’t it interesting, Satan can talk about God as the Creator but when it talks about God in a personal relationship with people, then we cut it off and what has Eve done? She’s bought the question.
In verse 2 she starts tracking as a spokesman for the couple, which is exactly what Satan wanted her to do and in verse 3 she repeats his vocabulary. Now here’s the lesson; if you can get someone to use your vocabulary you have infiltrated their way of thinking. If you can get the other person to track with your vocabulary, you have deeply affected their way of thinking. And so Satan has got Eve using Satan’s vocabulary at this point, and that’s the second element to notice that stage three has occurred: deception.
Now there’s another thing about this verse,
the last part, “and neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” And that emphasizes the fact that Eve adds to
it and what does she add? What is her
mind thinking of that makes her add this?
The emphasis on the negativeness of it, the prohibition, oh God is a
meany, He won’t let me do this, He won’t even let me touch it. See, she’s already in that mental attitude;
she’s already picked up the spirit or attitude from Satan and she’s starting to
play out in her vocabulary, and here she is flagrantly adding to the Scripture. So that’s stage three.
Genesis 3:4, stage four: “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye will not surely die.” And so stage four is when we have an overt challenge to the Word of God. The Word of God now, because of the autonomous spirit that is set in motion, the deception that it causes, now the deception plays out in the statement that exactly conflicts with the Word of God. In fact, the author has Satan saying, “You shall not surely die” and it’s an exact citation from Genesis 2:17. Remember the Scripture there? It’s an exact reversal. Satan says you’ll not die, now Eve, come on, He really doesn’t mean that, and in fact Eve, I’ll guarantee 100% you’re not going to die, no sweat, this is an unconditional guarantee. So we’ve got the fourth stage, an overt break with the Scriptures.
Geneses 3:5-6, For God does know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes will be opened,” that’s an idiom for you will learn, “and you will be as gods,” actually you will be as God, singular, it’s Elohim, a proper noun, “knowing good and evil,” meaning you will become mature and God knows that and He wants to keep you as a little kid. He wants to treat you as a baby, so Eve, God is a meany, God doesn’t have your best interest at heart, Eve, in restricting you in this area, casting insinuations on God’s character. [6] “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”
Now this gives us stage five, the acquisition of evil wisdom. Now remember the serpent was the most wise of the animals. All right, now watch this, and this will teach us all something about temptation. Temptation is total; temptation is always addressed to all of our being. And the temptation has a body side; it’s good for food, I’m hungry, I like good food. Fine, here’s a piece, good food; temptation to the body. It was delightful to the eyes and the eyes are the mind and stands for the soul, it appeals to your sense of ascetics, culture; good, tasteful, very pretty, and so the appeal is to the soul. And it’s also desired to make you wise, in the wisdom sense of the word wise or skillful spiritually, and so it appeals to the spirit…the tripartite nature of temptation.
Now this is not just an accident, this is not just something put in here, we just kind of read it and kiss it off and go to another passage. This sets off something in the rest of the Bible. Turn to Luke 4 for a minute; let’s look at the temptations of Christ. Luke 4:3; when Satan came to Christ did you ever notice how many temptations there were? Three; did you ever notice the difference between the temptations? They fit each one of these three categories; notice the first one in verse 3, “And the devil said unto Him, If you be the Son of God, command this stone, that it be bread.” The appeal to Jesus Christ’s humanity, his honest humanity for hunger because verse 2, look He just got through talking about—hunger. And so the first temptation of Satan is to the bodily lust. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the lust, the word “lust” means desire. And so verse 3, temptation one, to the body.
Luke 4:5, “And the devil, taking Him up
into an high mountain, showed unto Him all the kingdoms of the world in a
moment of time, [6] And the devil said to Him, All this power I will give you
,and the glory of them; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I will give it.” That’s why
he has his headquarters on the east side of
Now observe the third temptation, Luke 5:9, “And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If you be the Son of God, cast thyself down from here, [10] For it is written, He shall give His angels charger over you, to keep you, [11] And in their hands they shall bear the up,” in other words, spiritual power and command, a spiritual fireworks display, the appeal for this vast authority in the spiritual realm misused; the appeal to the spirit.
Let’s watch how this triumvirate character of temptation occurs again; turn to James 3:15, a description of evil wisdom. James is talking about how the local church was acting in verse 14 and then in 15 he says, “And this wisdom descends not from above, but is earthly,” body, “sensual,” soul, and “satanic,” spirit. So we again have this triumvirate character to temptation.
Finally turn to 1 John 2:15, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. [16] For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” What was that? “The lust of the flesh,” body; “the lust of the eyes,” soul; “the pride of life,” spirit. So again we have this triumvirate nature of sin and temptation; it is a total thing. Now what does this teach us about evil? Don’t emphasize one of these; you see, what happens in our society we emphasize this one, and what we’ll call the “gross” behavior. And this, in most people’s mind, when you use the word s-i-n, that’s what they associate it with. But now just a minute, this stuff here is human good, there’s nothing wrong with the kingdoms and the power and the glory. Christ is one day going to have the power and the glory of all the kingdoms of the earth. There’s nothing wrong with a sense of beauty and the desire to make things attractive, but there is when an autonomous spirit is involved. And so human good is the real heart of evil; it’s not personal sin or the gross sins. Those are there, yes, they’re part of it, but they’re only part of it so always consider it as just part of it. Don’t be like some, who argue just this is sin; no-no, sin is far more complicated.
Back to our little dialogue between Satan and the woman. We’ve gone to stage five in verse 6, the acquisition of evil wisdom. Now further in verse 6 she takes, and eats “the fruit thereof,” stage six, what is stage six? Stage six is when the mental attitude sin becomes overt; mental attitude sin persisted in long enough will always become overt. These clowns that go out and mug somebody on the street didn’t just suddenly duh, and go “insane” like they say in court, and kill somebody, they hated people for years before that ever happened and all they did at that moment in time was they couldn’t control their emotions and they just knifed somebody or blew his brains out or something and that was it. Why? Because for years, mental attitude sins, mental attitude sin, mental attitude sin, mental attitude sin, and one day when their restraining apparatus broke down, boom, it exploded into an act of violence. But it was cooking for months and years like a pressure cooker in the mind; mental attitude sins always precede overt activity. People that suddenly go out and commit suicide, come on… that just didn’t happen, they were feeling sorry for themselves for years, they elevated it, they wallowed in self-pity like you’d go swim in a pool and they loved it, they loved to relish it, poor me, sniff-sniff, and go through the whole process. And then finally one day “poor me” got too much and they finally blew their brains out; gee, so sudden… no, it wasn’t sudden; it was years of a four mental attitude that produced that overt activity. That’s always the case. And that’s why a Christian can’t hold to temporary insanity, it’s ridiculous.
Genesis 3:6, after she takes the fruit and she eats the next thing she does, and this goes to stage seven, is she gives it to her husband. In the Hebrew it’s very interesting, it says literally, “she gave it to her man with her,” now this is a tip and this is where I told you there’d be an interesting preposition here because this author, I’ve noticed in Genesis, he is very economical with his use of words and he doesn’t give extra words, and it would have been fully sufficient to have said “she gave also to her man,” period. But he doesn’t; he adds, “she gave also to her man who was with her.” And I suggest to you and I’m not going to be dogmatic but I suggest that this may be teaching that Adam was there watching his wife talk to the serpent and did nothing about it, that he was physically standing right there while she was being tempted. And if that’s the case is shows you the tremendous breakdown of him losing his leadership. He proceeded to allow this process to happen and was totally passive to it. And so she turns around to her husband who was standing there while she’s eating of it. At least he was there while she was eating of it, that we can be dogmatically confident of. She didn’t pick the tree and then run a five mile jog over to Adam and say hey, I found this great piece; nothing like that.
And then this seventh stage of sin is the gaining of social acceptance. If I have committed an overt activity how can I erase the pressure on my conscience? It’s very simple; get everybody else to do it. And Eve started this, and you’ll see it happen again, why are the homos going around with their signs for human rights and so on. For years they had to do it on the sly, and so now where do they do it? They want to march out… to relieve their conscience, that’s all, it’s very simple, and they want to get more people involved to do it and if they can more people involved in the thing then it’s easier for them to do it; it’s that simple. So Eve started it by sharing; evil always loves to share itself.
Genesis 3:7, “And the eyes of both of them were opened,” they were learned, they did learn, “and they knew they were naked.” Now this is the origin of shame, and I’m going to use two words this morning differently so let me define how I’m going to use them. “Shame” and “guilt,” they are different; the way I’m using the word “shame,” I’m using it here for their sense before one another; in other words, their sense of world-consciousness and self-consciousness before each other. They are ashamed of what has happened, not before God, shame is oriented before other people. It’s due to the conscience, yes, but it’s more oriented to others, our world-consciousness and our self-consciousness, and the arise of shame in verse 8 is associated here with the organs of excretion and it suggest, though again we can’t be dogmatic because of limited data, that there was a revolution, a radical thing that happened on the metabolism of the human body at the time of the fall. It’s also hinted at later when it talks about “the cool of the day,” the first time temperature is mentioned, the sensation of temperature; perspiration is mentioned later on. And so physiologists who have studied this passage who are Christians suggest that we may have here a radical shift in the human body’s metabolism that occurred almost instantly, and their body just felt different, something happened. And so stage eight is the origin of shame.
Stage nine, “…and they sewed fig leaves together,” stage nine is the refusal to admit to the problem, or cover-up, and all sin involves this, the fig leaf, the original cover-up. One of our horticulturists brought in some fig leaves and you can use your imagination to figure out how much these are going to cover. But nevertheless, the first covering, and they were about as efficient as that, this is an all time commentary from the humor of God at man trying to cover up his results; he’s just about as effect as Adam and Eve were with those things, except theirs weren’t dried out and crumbly like those, but nevertheless, the same kind of thing.
The cover-up, then, is the beginning of insanity; when men insist on following their autonomous principle that got them in trouble in the first place, and that’s what cover-up is, because when I’m faced with a problem I have to make a decision, am I going to solve it God’s way or am I going to forget it, and if it were not for grace all of us, all the time, if it were not for time, all of us all the time would go fig leaf every time, because the sin nature has a choice when it faces its own garbage. It’s to either go back and deny the autonomous principle that got started in the first place, back when she said I will decide whether God’s Word is right or wrong and I’ll be my final authority. That spirit has to be smashed, and that’s what it means to be a repentant spirit, it has to be changed to the one yes, God said it, it may smart, it may sting, it may hurt, but God said it and that’s the way we’re going to do it. Now that’s the submissive spirit. And that’s got to be changed or the only other choice the sin nature has is to cover it up and pretend it’s not a problem.
Well, the sin nature is not going to change the spirit because by definition it’s a fallen spirit and it’s not going to become un-fallen by itself; there’s no evolutionary improvement in the system possible. So therefore there’s only one option apart from grace: cover-up, every time, cover-up, cover-up, cover-up, cover-up, cover-up. And what is cover-up? Just think, the fig leaf, their whole body is changed, perhaps their metabolism is changed and so on and they’re running around with those things on saying oh, we’re all right, no problem, no problem. So the ninth stage is complete at this point and means that man begins to recreate reality after his own deception. Fig leaves are just simply trying to make the world fit our sinful categories and to this degree all of us are insane; since the fall. Since the fall there’s never been one perfectly sane individual. So if you’ve had doubts about yourself just enjoy them, they’re real, you are all partly insane, I am to, everybody knows that but… we just share one of the results of the fall.
The tenth stage, Genesis 3:8, “They head the noise of the LORD God walking in the garden … and they hid themselves.” And this tenth stage of sin is guilt. And here the guilt shows up because of their God-consciousness. God hasn’t talked, don’t translate that by “voice,” they heard “the noise of God walking in the garden,” all they heard was the noise, God didn’t say anything. Oh-oh, we’re in trouble, and it wasn’t any intellectual question, gee, I don’t really know Eve, whether God exists. No, they knew darn well He existed, and they knew it so well they were running from Him. So guilt originates right at this point, the fleeing from God.
Now let’s tie all this together, we’ve conducted ten stages of the development of sin and evil and we want to conclude by citing two doctrines. So turn to Romans 5:12 for one. These doctrines will be amplified in ensuing Sundays. One is called the doctrine of imputed sin. As of the time that Adam took of the fruit, according to Romans 5:12, “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned. [13] (For until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not credited where there is no law. [14] Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses,” now what he’s saying here is that from Adam down to Moses babies died, adults died, women died, men died, people of all kinds died and you have a physical death as an effect, and an effect must have a cause and what could possibly be the cause of, for example, an innocent baby dying? Well you say that baby hasn’t had a chance to sin yet; but he died. And if we’re Christians we have to view death as abnormal; it is not normal for a baby to die. Well, if the baby dies he must be under some sort of divine judgment; what divine judgment could the baby do when the baby hasn’t been guilty of personal sin yet? Answer: imputed sin. Adam’s sin is imputed, the word “imputed,” if this throws you use the word credit, credited sin. Adam’s sin is credited to the infant; it is credited to all men; it is a direct imputation so that when you have a child, that child, from the time that child takes its first breath shares the guilt of Adam’s sin.
You say well that’s not fair. Careful, that’s just exactly what Satan said to Eve, has God said it… no, that’s not right, God wasn’t very nice was He, to say that thing, now you don’t really want to buy that thing from God. So be careful; God’s Word says somehow all people, including infants who haven’t even reached the age of accountability are credited with Adam’s sin and that is the explanation for physical death in the universe. That baby is part of humanity and part of fallen Adam, and therefore he is credited with imputed sin. That’s the doctrine of imputed sin, it is credited directly.
The companion doctrine to that is the doctrine of inherent sin and that is the doctrine of the old sin nature. And that is mediate, that means Adam gave it to Seth and Seth gave it to his son, and so on down through history until it got to you. And you receive this through your parents, it’s the sin nature. Turn to Romans 7:5. We’ll deal with these in far more detail later. “For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death,” and the “fruit unto death” is the only thing that the sin nature can produce and it consists of personal sins and human good; it consists of the good, please notice, as well as what we call the evil. Good can be evil; good can be bad in the Scriptures, relative good and human good. And the sin nature cannot, according to verse 5, do anything other than produce and crank out evil, this is the doctrine of total depravity that men so hate. That means that every act apart from regeneration and the work of the Holy Spirit is a work of death.
Now this was the nadir of history, this was the most horrible moment of history, it was the origin of evil in man; it was the origin of cruelty, it was the origin of all the kinky things we think of in our mental attitude, it was not God’s fault, and it is something that must be remedied by a very radical, very, very well-designed solution. Socialism is not going to eradicate what we’ve just talked about; psychotherapy is not going to eradicate this. Nazism and communism and all the other panaceas that men have cranked out on a large scale national and international types are not going to handle this problem. The problem of sin is too deeply embedded in man to be solved by any person other than the original Creator, and thus we lay the plan for salvation; we cannot understand the plan of salvation until we understand what a disaster happened at this point. People who have a trivial view of grace and a trivial view of the cross of Christ are people who have a trivial view of evil. They do not think it’s this radical. Evil has affected the genetic tissue with which we’re made. It’s that profound and it can only be restructured by the Creator who originally created perfect.
It’s an illustration of the principle Paul talks of, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Faced with the chaos of sin and evil, only one solution, to go to God, the mighty fortress, so we will sing…..