In the 1970s there was a comedian named Flip Wilson. He performed characters such as Brother Leroy and Geraldine Jones. One of his most famous lines was “The Devil made me do it!” In Genesis 3:1-24 we heard a story where the devil really did make someone do it!

Many people try to discredit the Scriptures. They claim that the Bible is ancient, so it doesn’t apply to today’s world. How can words written thousands of years ago have any bearing on life in our modern world? These people claim that the Scriptures are not inspired by God but are merely stories invented by the early church. The miracles of Jesus, even His resurrection, are described as myths. These false ideas should not surprise us. Satan, who hates God’s Word, tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. He wants us to doubt God’s Word.

Why do we have such difficulty obeying God? One reason is our distance from God. Have you ever heard the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind?” That is one reason we have a difficult time obeying God. It’s not that we don’t believe in the reality, but we have difficulty understanding the importance of God in our daily lives. If we don’t see Him, we don’t think about Him.

The main reason we don’t obey God is that we really don’t trust Him. We know He is more knowledgeable than we are, but we’re not sure we can trust His motives. We see this in the passage we heard from Genesis. In essence, the serpent told Eve, “You know God said not to eat from that tree? It’s because He knows that if you do, you are going to be like Him, and He can’t stand the competition.” Thousands of years later, those words still linger in our minds. We think that God wants to limit our happiness.

The serpent was crafty, so in his first meeting with humans he focused the attention on the restriction, not on all the other delicious fruit. He chose not to talk to Adam, the one who received the divine command, but to the wife. The serpent directly attacked God by what he implied about the nature of the restrictions. Satan distorted and twisted what God told Eve and caused her to doubt God’s love. He does the same thing with us today. He comes to us with half truths and innuendos and tries to plant questions in our mind concerning God.

When Satan said that “your eyes will be opened,” he spoke a partial truth. This is a common tactic of his when tempting humans. He appealed to Eve’s desires, just as he did with Christ in the wilderness, and as he does with all Christians. When Adam ate of the fruit, sin and death became earth’s realities.

By manifesting himself in another form as a means to deceive someone into doubting and disobeying God, Satan established himself as a force to be reckoned with. In learning about God, Adam and Eve discovered that God would not excuse sin. They also found out that He would not discard the sinner. God’s grace gives us a chance to be changed by His love. It gives us a moment in which we meet God and His awesome grace, and we surrender. We stop running from God and start running to Him.

When Adam and Eve were seduced and ensnared by the devil to do the very thing God told them not to do, the whole world was affected. Everything changed that day through one decision made apart from God’s will. Eve did what so many people do even now; she revised and then rejected what God said. This sin always produces the same result-separation from God and ultimately, death-unless sin is atoned for.

Was Eve’s desire to be like God wrong? No. Many Christians today want to be more like God. We pray prayers like “Let me follow You. Let me be conformed into Your image. Make me more like You. Please increase and let me decrease.” Those are biblical prayers from hearts that truly seek the Lord. So why was the punishment so severe for Eve’s desire? Eve was wrong in thinking that being disobedient would achieve her desire. Eve was deceived that she could become “wise” like God by doing it her way, instead of remaining in line with His ways. Eve exchanged the peace of God for a piece of fruit and severed her relationship with God. As a result, that day she died spiritually, which led to an ultimate physical death. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden as another consequence.

Adam tried to place the blame for his sin onto Eve and even onto God himself. Eve, in turn, tried to blame the serpent. Human nature is to point to someone else when caught in sin, but God is never fooled; He sees and knows everything. We can’t blame our sin on some overpowering supernatural dragon that forced the forbidden fruit into our mouth and down our throat, but when the serpent stepped aside, why didn’t Adam step in and simply say no? Why didn’t he intervene and stop his wife when she reached out to pick the forbidden fruit?

Two curses followed man’s sin: the curse on the serpent and the curse on the ground. These curses will not be resolved until the events described in Revelation 20-22 occur. Notice that man and woman are not cursed. God blessed them in Geneses 1:28; once God blesses, He cannot curse.

Some scholars call Gensis 3:15 the first gospel because the words “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel,” contain the seed of the earliest statement of the good news of salvation. The coming of the woman’s seed was fulfilled in Jesus’ birth. On the cross, Jesus’ body was bruised and broken; at the second coming of Christ, Satan’s head will be bruised.

With the curse on humanity came the tragic realities: sorrow, pain, relationship discord, sweat, and death. This movement toward breakdown anticipated science’s Second Law of Thermodynamics. It also counters evolution, which claims that systems improve over time.

Adam paid for his disobedience to God with a lifetime of toil and regret, remembering the way it used to be before his separation from God. The one force that unites Adam and his seed is disobedience, but the strength that unites Christ and His seed is obedience.

Adam bore the weight of the curse of the ground because he was the head-not only of his wife but of all humankind. With Adam’s sin, humanity’s paradise became a hostile wilderness: the roses grew thorns and the tigers became meat eaters. The entire world groans for Eden to be re-created. When Christ returns to rule and reign on this earth during the Millenium, life will resume as it was before the curse. The full resolution will be in the eternal state.

When humans do wrong, their impulse is to hide (if they are still sensitive to sin). Sin disrupts a person’s relationship with other and with God. Still, God seeks a relationship. With sin comes self-consciousness and shame. God made Adam and Eve tunics of skin from animals; thus blood was shed as a result of their sin. This even foreshadows the necessity of blood sacrifices-first of animals and then of Christ-to bridge humanity’s sin-separation from God. What God does to fully clothe the couple demonstrates the inadequacy of the fig-leaf coverings that Adam and Eve made themselves. Human attempts at self-sufficiency will always fall short.

As we draw closer to God, He draws nearer to us and is faithful to speak in a way that brings peace, confirmation, and changes to our surrounding circumstances. We have to ask ourselves whom we are listening to. There are so many voices speaking and our minds seem to have a voice of their own. Which voice do we follow?

Many people in our lives give us conflicting messages. Each of us has the responsibility to know what God is telling us, to listen to Him, and to act on those commands. We have to make God’s Word our guide and not deviate from His truths regardless of how appealing other additional information may sound. One un-dealt-with lie can destroy our destiny. That is why we must always fill ourselves with the truth of God’s Word. The devil is a liar, so don’t give him any ground. We need to get in the Word and learn what God says about us.

Whenever a troublesome thought presents itself, we should ask ourselves, “Who told you this?” If something is from God, then we should listen to it, but if it’s from the devil, we should reject it immediately. God asked Adam a similar question right after his sin. “Who told you that you were naked?” This question made Adam face up to his sin, and when we sin, that same question makes us face up to our sin and the consequences.

(An audio version of this message can be found at https://www.spreaker.com/episode/genesis-3-verses-1-24-the-devil-made-me-do-it–69548677)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; pp. 9-10)
2. Dr. Robert Jeffress, “Our Distrust of God.” Retrieved from drrobertjeffress@ptv.org
3. “I Do It.” Retrieved from seeds@ellel.org
4. Christine Caine, “Truth Over Lies.” Retrieved from no-reply@christinecaine.com
5. Michael Youssef, Ph.D., “God’s Grace will Find Us.” Retrieved from noreply@ltw.org
6. “The Hunger for No Restrictions.” Retrieved from truthenote@truth-encounter.ccsend.com
7. “Don’t Just Stand There.” Retrieved from truthenote@truth-encounter.ccsend.com
8. Jack Graham, “All In: The Family.” Retrieved from jgraham@powerpoint.org
9. Vikke Burke, “Positioned for the Miraculous.” Retrieved from dbn-dennisburkeministries.org@shared1.ccsend.com
10. Dr. Carol Geisler, “O God of Light.” Retrieved from www.lhm.org
11. “Return to the Question.” Retrieved from seeds@ellel.org