Genesis 3:4-7

What are you looking at?
All right, everyone,
thanks for being back with us.
We are continuing today through chapter three
and chapter three is sometimes called the fall
and or the temptation.
And we are picking up
today in verse four.
Remember that the serpent has asked Eve or the woman
a question and his question was
misleading
and served to get her attention on the tree
that they are not to take of.
So this is his now response to her answer.
“But the serpent said to the woman,
‘You will not die,
for God knows that when you eat of it,
your eyes will be opened and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil.'”
Okay, so here we see how quickly the serpent
has upped the temptation.
From first drawing attention to the limitation,
now he insinuates, actually fairly clearly states,
that God has misled the woman.
God,
he’s now essentially saying that God has told
the woman something that isn’t true.
You won’t die,
for God knows when you eat of it,
your eyes will be opened.
And now the serpent is introducing this idea of animosity,
fear, jealousy,
something between God and the woman.
God doesn’t want you.
He knows that if you do that,
you’re going to get better.
He doesn’t want you.
He’s trying to hold you down.
He’s trying to keep you from this good thing.
And so we read it fairly innocuously
’cause we’re familiar with it.
But this is a serious accusation that the serpent
has put out there rather kind of blandly.
But if you really follow the logic here,
he is saying very disturbing things to the woman
about her trust and her ability to trust God.
Yeah, right, let’s not
push past the fact
that in the first quote we have,
or the first question rather,
he essentially asks a misleading throwaway kind of question
to God saying you couldn’t eat from any tree,
which the obvious answer is no,
that’s not what God said.
In this question though,
the serpent is actually insinuating
that the serpent knows what God said
better than even the woman does,
right?
This idea that no,
you’ve missed a fundamental aspect
of what was said here,
that God has misled you.
There’s a knowledge of the intention of God
that there’s no way that this created creature could have.
Yet,
here we have this idea that ultimately,
if you were to trust God,
the one who created you,
then you’re going to not fulfill the full potential
that you would like to have
or that you would prefer to be able to acquire.
And so we have this strange,
though somewhat remarkably
quick transition away from just asking a question
about what can and can’t you do
to a literal denial of the facts of the truth
of the one who gave that information in the first place?
Yeah, and the language is important here.
Knowing good and evil,
that comes to be of importance later,
but this idea that your eyes will be open.
In other words,
God has not told you the truth.
God doesn’t want you to see the truth.
And the implication here,
as Michael has alluded to,
is that the serpent knows more
about the real story than God.
That the serpent is a trusted source of information,
and God is not.
And it would be nice if there were some long-drawn out
temptation narrative, if we read that for days on end,
Eve walked past the tree
until she finally couldn’t take it anymore.
But the scripture’s appraisal of human strength is pretty low.
And so we jump right to the next verse.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
that it was a delight to the eyes,
and the tree was desired to make one wise,
she took of the fruit,
and she also gave some to her husband who was with her,
and he ate.
Then both of their eyes were opened,
and they knew that they were naked,
and they sewed fig leaves together
and made loin clots for themselves.
Interestingly,
we normally kind of read this very sequentially,
that Eve ate first,
that she goes and finds Adam,
that she then almost fulfills the role of the serpent
in their relationship, that she sort of tempts him.
This story is told very simply,
and I think cuts against those assumptions.
He was with her,
she took some,
she gave some to him,
and they ate.
That’s everything.
We have made novels and pictures
and theologies of women and men.
We have shoved so many of our assumptions into this text
that it’s very hard to read it
as simply as it is stated.
She took some,
she ate it,
and she gave some to her husband who was with her,
and he ate.
This is really less a case of a domino falling
and hitting the next one,
than something they essentially do together.
This is not the story of a woman who falls
and then tricks a man.
This is men and women disobeying God together.
I don’t think that there’s a moral separation here
that we sometimes have tried to read into this story.
I think it’s a great caution.
Actually, I was gonna say that no story in the Bible
probably has gotten as much airtime
with comedians as this story.
Because there’s a lot of gender jokes that get made here.
There’s a lot of sort of oppositional kind of things
that you can do with this text.
But friends, the reality is here.
And I think we actually,
because this story is a hallmark of every children’s Bible,
I think we maybe make this a child’s story,
but this isn’t a child’s story.
It actually is a substantial glimpse
into the darkness of the human soul.
You might not see it in my Bible here.
Let me throw this up so that you can see it.
This is verse five here.
It says, “For God knows that when you eat of it,
“your eyes will be opened.
“You will be like God.” This is critical.
See, there’s a comma there,
knowing good and evil.
So if you look this up in a critical commentary,
what they’re gonna tell you is that the knowing good
and evil here is hard to translate.
That fundamentally,
these words are jammed next
to each other in the original language,
which means that a possible interpretation of this
is that when you say that this knowing of good and evil,
that it means that you will be knowing God,
that you will be like God,
that you will have that deified character,
that you will have risen to the level that God is,
that God’s holding back from you the part
of God’s greatness that you could have
if you partook of this.
And if that’s accurate,
bear with me for just a second here,
think about the implication of this.
That means that what’s at stake here
isn’t just we wanna be a little wiser.
It’s we want to rise up a level.
We want to be called God’s equal.
We don’t want there to be any difference between us
than the one who made everything.
And that is a huge grasp.
I mean, ultimately, that’s an impossible reach
for the creation to try to reach to the level of creator.
And that’s exactly what’s in play in this story.
I think a case could be made that inherent
in all temptation is that idea to disobey
what God has wanted for what we have,
to fulfill the role of God for ourselves, to
take the idea of ownership and
directorship and initiative for ourselves
rather than look to God for that.
And so I think that is a perfectly acceptable way
to read this text that in taking of the fruit,
in disobeying what God has said,
particularly under the advice of the serpent who said,
you will become God-like,
you will be,
this will elevate you.
Even Adam are tempted because at the root of that is selfishness,
it’s pride, it’s ego, it’s self-desire, self-satisfaction.
And it’s no surprise that that’s where the snake presses.
That’s the button that he tries to push.
That is an inherent weakness in most of us.
And so then there is in the immediate aftermath of their eating,
the eyes of both were opened
and they knew they were naked
and they sewed fig leaves together
and made loin claus for themselves.
The first thing that happens in the aftermath
of the disobedience is a distancing from one another.
They are no longer unashamed.
Remember it told us this in the early part of the story
that they were naked but they were unashamed.
Now they separate from one another visually.
They cover themselves before one another.
They no longer look upon each other without shame,
without distance.
There is something that has changed in their relationship
and the result is embarrassment,
the result is covering,
is not being able to see one another in fullness,
not being willing to be seen in fullness.
So the first thing that happens here is subtle,
but it’s important that they now,
to some extent,
as they will tomorrow from God,
they to some extent now hide themselves from one another.
Yeah, make no mistake about it here that
there is a play here between knowledge and open eyes
and there’s a play between the crafty serpent who comes
and the pursuit of wisdom.
This is the narrative that they’re telling themselves,
that this tree is beautiful.
The fruit is even,
what’s the exact word that we have here?
The fruit is desirable.
A delight to the eye.
Oh, a delight to the eye,
right.
So here, these are all positive frames
that Eve has already told this story to herself
that this is going to be good,
that this is an opportunity for me to take a step forward.
We often do consider wisdom to be a positive step.
We often do consider our eyes being opened
and illumination to be a positive thing.
It’s not very often you hear that in the negative sense.
Well, that’s in play here,
right, because this is the narrative that Eve is telling herself,
but the problem is that she’s using that narrative
to move herself out of her right relationship,
both with Adam and as also with God,
and she’s moving into a new state
where her eyes being opened actually creates for her
an awareness of lack,
of vulnerability,
of spiritual jealousy,
right?
So she now inhabits a world in which she has to be aware
of the literal division or separation
between her and these other relationships
that she in her innocence did not need to have.
So wisdom is being redefined.
It’s not just this infinite quest moving forward
to try to acquire knowledge and insight.
It’s actually wisdom under the guidance and purview
of what God intended that we should value.
Wisdom would have been following God’s directive,
Clint, but that’s not what they reached for.
They reached for their own kind of wisdom,
and in doing so,
they saw things that they weren’t intended
to see.
Yeah, this can be a struggle for us.
We sometimes inherently think that knowing things is good,
but there are things that probably each of us know
that we wish we didn’t, right?
There are things that we’ve learned through hardship.
There are things that we’ve learned about others
that we wish we could unlearn.
In fact, I recently listened to an interview
with a man who had struggled with alcoholism,
and he
said exactly that.
He said,
“I wish I could unlearn the things
“that I wish I didn’t know.”
And there is that sense here that what Adam and Eve
have now learned doesn’t make them better.
This is not knowledge that preserves.
This is not knowledge that allows them
to navigate their world better.
This isn’t knowledge that somehow makes them better people.
They now know themselves as fallen.
They now know themselves as separate.
They now know themselves as naked.
Imagine some of the things that as we grow,
our children unlearn, whether it’s characters
associated with major holidays or whatever that might be.
There’s a certain sadness in coming to know some things
that you kind of liked when you didn’t know.
And that’s what fallen means.
They have left the place of trust.
They’ve left the place of relationship.
We will see that especially tomorrow.
But there is now a wedge,
relational wedge.
It’s hinted at between them and tomorrow,
I think we see it more clearly between the humans and their creator.
Yeah, right.
And let’s make no mistake about it
that we are tempted to believe that being able
to discern between good and evil
is generally a positive thing.
In fact, that’s the thing that we strive to teach our kids
and remind ourselves of.
That’s not what’s in play here
because fundamentally Adam and Eve,
they didn’t need to discern between good and evil.
They lived in a garden that was created and ordered
so that they might be safe and flourish.
There’s been all of this positive commandment
thus far in the creation story to grow,
to expand,
to enjoy this place, right?
There’s been no need for God to illuminate their eyes
to reveal to them the right and the wrong.
There’s no need for the kind of moral jiggering
that is now gonna be a part of Adam and Eve’s life
from this point forward.
They’ve made the decision to themselves
become those tinkering with right and wrong,
with moral.
They didn’t need to.
That was not what they were intended to do as the creation,
but yet that is what they aspired to take.
And in doing so,
they now bear the weight of it.
And this is, I mean, not to make this overly simplistic,
Clint, but when we reach for privilege in our own lives,
it always comes with a form of responsibility.
And lots of times we don’t like the responsibility
that comes with it.
That’s a reality of life.
And they’ve done that in the ultimate cosmic sense in this story.
Be very careful not to insert the word about.
In other words,
we’re maybe tempted to think,
well, they knew about good and they knew about evil.
Pre this decision,
they only knew good.
They knew the fruit of the garden.
They knew the safety of the garden.
They knew the relationship with the creator.
They didn’t know evil.
They hadn’t done evil.
They hadn’t disobeyed.
This is not information they have learned.
This is
hindrance.
This is mistake.
They’ve now learned through disobedience.
They now know evil,
not know about evil.
They now know evil.
They’ve practiced it.
They’ve fallen into temptation and disobeyed
their creator.
And they now know,
as previously they only knew good,
now they know both sides of the fence.
And consequently, there will no longer be a place for them
in the place that is only made for good.
Yeah, that’s really the danger,
isn’t it?
In making this story about some people stealing some fruit,
like some people going and stealing a ho-ho,
right?
Like you say, man, it seems like a disproportionate outcome
to the crime that’s committed.
But when you really slow down to read the story
and you try to separate from all of that classic imagery
of the apple on the tree,
that apple, by the way, has shown up in all of these different places.
I even think of like Snow White.
You have this apple that’s this tempting thing, right?
It’s built into sort of even our cultural imagination.
It’s not about the apple.
It’s about what it reveals to us
about the human inclination.
It reveals to us the extent to which we’re willing to go
to literally take from God’s tree
the thing that God said is the only thing
that we should avoid,
right?
For God to say,
I’ve created a world of abundance.
This is what I want for you.
And then us to see that abundance and say,
but I will only be content if I get this thing,
God, and then we make this demand of God as the creator.
Friends, this isn’t some small little mistake
on a Wednesday afternoon.
This is the revelation,
unfortunately in a very negative direction
of the extent to which we as humans
are willing to try to grasp at the power authority
and the intention of the one who made us.
And to whatever extent we all know that is within us,
we participate in the same temptation
that Adam and Eve gave into.
Yeah, when you’ve seen this story on a felt board
or narrated in a children’s Bible,
it perhaps loses some of its edge.
But anything you want to substitute for eating the fruit,
the most heinous of acts,
the most callous of hearts,
the whatever it is that human disobedience
has led to since the garden,
is inherent in the taking of this fruit.
That is the idea of the,
and again,
pay attention next week when we see how quickly this act
moves, how quickly it grows into full born,
full fledged, full bore sin.
And I think it’s clear to see that this is the depth
of what the story means in this disobedient act.
Isn’t it interesting, Clint, with how much time
in art and in sermons and in Sunday school classes
we’ve given to this text,
how little is actually here?
A lot of this,
as you led this afternoon,
a lot of this is a product of our imagination
as opposed to what’s actually in the scriptures.
What we actually have here are sparse words,
which I think really are an invitation for us to see
this not as sort of a cosmic film set,
but rather as an opportunity for us to see this
as a reflection of ourselves.
I mean, we can so easily put ourselves in these characters.
That is not an accident.
And I think that’s a really helpful preconception
to come to this story with,
’cause that is where we learn a lesson
as opposed to just seeing a thing play out
that we wish hadn’t.
To some extent,
this is true of all of Genesis,
but I think particularly in the first two chapters,
we are given many opportunities to miss the point.
There are lots of rabbit trails to follow.
Why is it a fruit?
What kind of fruit is it?
These are the questions that have occupied people’s mind.
And it’s not that they’re not interesting,
it’s that generally they’re not particularly helpful
because they detract from and distract us from
the main point, which is God created us to be one way, and through disobedience,
we became another way.
And again,
we can play around with some of those questions.
Some of it is even fun,
but you have to be very careful thinking
this is a story about what kind of fruit
you should or shouldn’t eat.
That’s not it at all.
Well said, good summary.
Thanks for being with us,
friends.
We will see you tomorrow.