Genesis chapter three opens by introducing us to a new character, the Serpent. The text tells us that the Serpent was more crafty or subtle than any of the other creatures. Just like with any good story, this is a set up to introduce us to the antagonist. And the antagonist is almost always a snake!

The first thing this snake does is go up to a woman and make her doubt what she knew to be true. He asked, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Basically, did God say you can’t eat anything in the garden? The answer is no, that’s not what God said. God gave a very specific qualification that humans could eat of any tree except the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. If we look back in chapter two of Genesis, we will notice that God gave this directive to man before woman was created, so man had to have told woman at some point because she responds to the Serpent by saying that they can’t eat or touch the fruit or else they will die. Now that’s not exactly what God said, he said they couldn’t eat the fruit, but he didn’t say anything about not touching it, so there’s already a misunderstanding of the word of God.

So the Serpent continues with his mind games and tells the woman that she’ll be like God if she eats the fruit and of course she won’t die. So she looked at the tree (don’t our eyes always get us into trouble?) and liked what she saw, so she ate the fruit and then shared some with her husband. Sharing is caring!!

The sneaky sneaky snake cornered this poor woman to spew his lies. My question is, where was the man in all of this? His woman was talking to a snake and he doesn’t pop up on the scene until she offers him some food? Really. After that, the Serpent pretty much flees the scene and leaves the man and woman to figure out life themselves. He just sort of showed up to cause trouble and then dipped out.

Once the man and woman ate of the fruit, they realized that they were naked so they tried to cover up with some fig leaves. Back in chapter two, they were naked and unashamed, so now they’re clothed and ashamed. Something is wrong here.

The next thing that happens is that God shows up on the scene. He strolls through the garden in the cool of the day and the man and woman hide from him because they know they messed up. And God, already knowing what went down called to them to see how they would react. Immediately, everyone starts playing the blame game. The woman blames the Serpent, the man blames the woman and God (“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat”), I imagine the Serpent is looking around like “Who me?” Shame will do that to you, make you afraid, make you hide, make you play the blame game.

The thing that gets me is that NOBODY took responsibility for what went down. NOBODY said, hey yeah actually it was me, I messed up. NOBODY stood up for anyone else. NOBODY owned what they did. They all just pointed fingers. And that led to God punishing them all.

To the Serpent, He cursed him to crawl on the Earth and be trampled on by man. To the woman, He increased (multiplied) her pain in childbirth and made her desires about her husband. And to the man, He cursed the ground that man is to work on, telling him he will need to sweat (work hard) to eat and that he was born from nothing (dust) and will die and be nothing (dust).

After this, God shows compassion for the humans. He clothes them in animal skin. That must have been a lot more comfortable that fig leaves. After the humans had some comfort, God enforced the last consequence to their actions. He kicked them out of the garden and placed an angel with a flaming sword there to stand guard so they couldn’t return. Man and woman, now named Adam and Eve, had to make their home else where. And for anyone who has ever moved to a new city, it is hard to leave the place you loved for the unknown.

The thing about temptation is it will develop you or destroy you.

Your character is made through trials and how you learn to (or not to) handle them. Some choices that I have made in life have caused me to absolutely crumble, but the lessons I have learned from those moments have been tattooed on my heart. In life, we can either own up to the choices we have made and deal with the suffering head on, or we can play the blame game and see how far that takes us. Regardless, we are not perfect and will mess up along the way just like the first humans.

Be encouraged though! God shows us in this first temptation in Scripture that although there are consequences to our disobedience, we can still live, we can be happy and we can still talk with God. All is not lost. Life goes on.