Sunday
Sunday
Denying God’s Truthfulness
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’?”
Genesis 3:1
We remind ourselves that God had given Adam and Eve three instructions—a permission to eat freely of every tree in the garden, a prohibition to eat of one tree, and a penalty for disobedience. So they knew precisely what they might do, what they might not do, and what would happen if they disobeyed. Now we need to consider how the serpent, being craftier than all God’s other creatures, twisted these things into temptations. The subtlety of Satan still employs the same tactics.
Today we will consider that the devil denied the truthfulness of God. God had said that “when you eat of it you will surely die” (2:17), but the devil said, “You will not surely die” (3:4). So Eve was faced with a contradiction. They could not both be right; one of them must be lying. Which? Alas! She believed the devil’s lie and doubted the truthfulness of God.
But God was telling the truth. On the one hand, Adam and Eve died spiritually. Until they sinned they ate freely from the tree of life, but now they forfeited this privileged access, and the way to the tree of life was strictly guarded (vv. 22–24). On the other hand, their bodies became mortal. God said to Adam, “Dust you are and to dust you will return” (v. 19). The fossil record clearly indicates that death had existed in the vegetable and animal kingdoms from the beginning. But it seems that God intended human beings made in his image to experience a nobler end than the disintegration we call death, perhaps a “translation” like Enoch and Elijah without tasting death.
The devil still denies God’s warnings of his judgment and of the awful reality of hell for those who refuse to repent. We continue to hear the devil’s whisper, “You will not die.” But it is false prophets who say, “Peace,” when there is no peace (e.g., Ezek. 13:10). And, as Jesus said, the devil is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
For further reading: John 8:42–44