3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”  The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

The account of The Fall is not intended to explain everything in life or to answer every question. The focus is on a few things – the original nature of man and his relationship with God and the world, his fall from innocence and the sources of the difficulties of life. “Why are things the way they are?”

2.  God’s relationship with his creation:

The Garden of Eden was not a greenhouse. Life from the beginning has been a process of a growing relationship with God. Adam and Eve were not free of temptation and the world was not free of deceit. It was not heaven in that sense. But God was physically present and walked in the garden. Man could see him. It was a relationship of trust.

After the Fall, man loses his ability to see God. God is holy and “no man may see me and live” as it says in Exodus 33:20.  In Christ we have a new Adam. In Him we can re-establish the relationship with our Creator. We can be reconciled to God.

Romans 5:18-19: ” Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

Finally, God will renew the world and dwell here – not in a garden but in a city.

Revelation 21:3:  “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”

3.  The desire of Satan. He longs to see us destroyed and to consume us.

Scripture uses the word desire to describe a particular kind of distortion and danger:

Genesis 4:7: “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

Luke 22:31: “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat.”

James 1:13-15:  “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”

Screwtape passage: The annual dinner of the Tempter’s Training College for young devils.

“…the human souls on whose anguish we have been feasting tonight were of pretty poor quality. Not all the most skillful cookery of our tormentors could make them better than insipid….Oh to get one’s teeth again into a …Henry VIII, or even a Hitler! There was real crackling there; something to crunch; a rage, an egotism, a cruelty only just less robust than our own. It put up a delicious resistance to being devoured. It warmed your innards when you’d got it down.”

Sin longs to have us. It never stops thinking about its desire to absorb us – to devour us – to make everything his.

But there is also a good desire put in our hearts by God.

Genesis 3:6 “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”

God put a desire for wisdom in his creation but that same desire has been distorted. Desire is good and a life without desire is miserable. It’s what we call acedia – a life with no desire. No aspirations. Nothing to care about.

Proverbs 4:7: “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom.  Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”

Proverbs 3:13-19:

13 Blessed are those who find wisdom,
those who gain understanding,
14 for she is more profitable than silver
and yields better returns than gold.
15 She is more precious than rubies;
nothing you desire can compare with her.
16 Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honor.
17 Her ways are pleasant ways,
and all her paths are peace.
18 She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her;
those who hold her fast will be blessed.
19 By wisdom the Lord laid the earth’s foundations,
by understanding he set the heavens in place;

But there is no shortcut to wisdom. It is a gift from God – not something we can get on our own.

Proverbs 2:6: “For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.”

The desire for wisdom is good and, as James would say, a gift from above. However, it comes in God’s time and in His way. But an inappropriate desire comes from the sense of filling up a lack in yourself. You want something to possess that is not yours.

The beginning of true wisdom is obedience and fear of The Lord. I don’t think the fruit of the tree of knowledge would have always been denied them but it would have come in God’s time when they were ready for it. They wanted it immediately.

4.  In the 1950’s, Paul MacLean, the son of a Presbyterian minister, proposed the model of the triune brain.

The earliest part of the brain, the R-complex or reptilian is the most basic and instinctual. It controls basic survival behavior, fear, hunger, fight or flight, rage and irrational hatred. It is the serpent brain.  The second part of the brain is the limbic and it controls the emotions and value judgments – what is agreeable and disagreeable, pleasant and unpleasant.  The third part and the most advanced is the neocortex and it makes language and abstract thought possible.

5.  All the symbols of the three levels are here in this passage:

Reptile: irrational hatred
Limbic: pleasing to the eye
Neocortex: the knowledge of good and evil. The desire for wisdom.

6.  What is the serpent’s intent?

a). To deceive and corrupt the one who was created to rule over him. 1:28
b). He sees himself as the first born from the beginning…and man as an intruder on that relationship. He was there before man and he wanted to return to the world of the 5th day – no one to rule over him. At the root of all sin is rebellion and disobedience.
c). He cannot destroy man so he wants to make God hate the one who displaced him – to make God hate what God loves. To see God destroy what God loves. “If I can just get him to do something so terrible that God would love me and only me again. No one else.”
d). He keeps coming back to make the case against man. Job 1:8: “Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” And Satan answers: “Does Job fear God for nothing? But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and will surely curse you to your face.”

He comes back to tempt Jesus in the wilderness. Worship me.

He is the accuser of the saints. Revelation 12:10:  “For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.”

Satan is not interested in making life hard for us. He doesn’t even want to destroy us himself. He wants God to hate us. To give up on us and destroy us. To take the world back to a place with no ruler – no Adam. The return of the old order. What could be more fitting than to prove to God that He was wrong to have created man in the first place?

7.  Where does it end?

A lake of fire. It’s not deep water but like a marsh. The word is “limne”. Shallow water. He’s cast into a marsh – not the more dramatic bottom of the deep sea.

And what is eternal torment for the serpent, the devil, Satan, the deceiver, the accuser? It is this:

Revelation 21:3-5: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”  He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

God will live again with the one he loves. He will walk the streets in the cool of the day and the old order will have passed away forever. The old order of the 5th day when the serpent had no one to rule over him will have passed away forever. God and the creation he loves will live together with nothing between them.