Genesis

Temptation & Suffering

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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.

Coming from Nothing

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Genesis chapter two begins with God resting. Previously in chapter one, we saw God labor for six days. Now that the work has been finished verse two tells us, “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” (KJV). It is interesting that this is the first principle that God teaches man. Just the day before, man was created and given food and dominion. The very next day, God shows man how to take a break after working hard, that there is more to life than work. And more importantly, God marked this time of rest as holy.

The rest of the chapter departs from this principle and jumps into a retelling of how God formed man. It begins by showing us the set up, that God watered the land to prepare the buffet of vegetation for man and animal to roam the land. Then, in verse seven it says that God formed man from the dust of the ground. Literally from dirt, from nothingness, God created something and breathed life into it. The dirt we walk on, that we pay no attention to except when we sweep it out of our house, that very same dirt that forms the land we walk on, God turned into human life.

After that, God makes a home for the man in the Garden of Eden. There was both food for the man to eat and trees that were there to look beautiful. God not only cares about man’s physical needs, but also his mental and emotional needs. The practical and the beautiful were combined to help create man’s dwelling place. And within that dwelling place also existed the tree of life and the tree of good and evil. To me that shows that God trusted man to be surrounded by life and by knowledge.

The chapter goes on to show all of the attributes and goods in the garden, it was by no means a small place to be able to hold the four rivers that flowed from it, the gold, the trees and all the other goods of the land. With the vastness of the garden, God put man to work the land. I imagine that man understood how to work well, after having witnessed the work of God. The one charge that God gave man was to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil or he would die.

Now I don’t know about anyone else, but when someone tells me not to do something I automatically start to think about the thing that I can’t do instead of all of the things I can do. The only thing man was told not to do was to eat of one particular tree. That is it. Every other tree you can eat from, you can hang out in the land, check out the gold in Havilah, swim in any of the four rivers, and if that wasn’t enough God also decides to form a helper for man so he’s not alone. That’s A LOT of things you can do, and just the one small thing you can’t do. More on that one thing later.

In looking for a helper for man, God formed every creature imaginable. And he let man name them, so man got to be part of the creative process. If you don’t believe that man and God got to be creative together, take a look at the platypus.

After man spent some time in the biblical tinder game of swiping left on a bunch of creatures and not finding his match, God literally created the perfect woman for him. God made man go to sleep so He could do the work that was needed to be done without interference and took a rib from the man (who doesn’t love ribs?) in order to form his mate. Man’s perfect mate, his helper, had been a part of him the whole time. And that is the last thing God creates. Woman. The culmination of creation.

Man acknowledges that Woman came from his flesh and bones and says the phrase “at last”. After waiting and seeing so many creatures, he saw the one that was familiar, comfortable, and part of him. And the word tells us that man will leave his parents for his wife and that the two become one flesh.

The chapter ends by telling us that both man and woman were naked and not ashamed. To be naked is to be vulnerable, open, hiding nothing, no covering or protection. The fact that they could be naked together tells me that there was a level of trust and openness that existed between them. They felt comfortable in their own skin.

Oh to feel comfortable in your own skin! That is the dream, but many of us don’t live that dream. We let the world tell us who we are and how we should feel. Let me tell you something though. God created us to be us. We are not platypuses or cats or ostriches or any other creature. We are also not Spartacus, Cleopatra, King Nebuchadnezzar, Jackie Robinson, or Meryl Streep (unless in fact you are Meryl Streep reading this, in which case disregard my last and congrats on the Oscar I am sure you are nominated for just for reading this).

You were created to be YOU!!!

God breathed life into your lungs. He formed you out of nothingness and saw that you were a precious gift to the Earth. Don’t focus on the one tree you can’t eat from. Be naked and unashamed as you dance, prance, sing, shout, jump and run through the amazing garden you live in! Keep your focus on all that has been given to you and all that you have been created to do and don’t be ashamed.