basicchristian devotional #E35
Genesis 2:16-17
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it your will surely die.”
Obviously, the man in the passage above is Adam. If you will recall, Adam had a pretty good deal with God. The Bible tells us that God put Adam “to work” in the Garden of Eden, but by all accounts, it wasn’t a bad job. In fact, God even created a helper for Adam in the person of Eve. The two of them had a nice existence, having been given the earth for their own use. The only condition? Don’t eat from the tree of knowledge. So what did they do?
Genesis 3:2-4
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 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.’ “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.
And so, mankind’s first lie was born. I heard R.C. Sproul say recently that we often believe the original lie of the tempter- that we’ll be happy if we get what we want. Satan continues to lie to each and every one of us daily. But gee, we’re living in the year 2000, so who has a big desire to eat fruit from a special tree? No, we want other things like money, power and material things, but we still have a special kinship with our grandest grandmother, Eve. Eve knew to stay away from the tree, and if Satan hadn’t been in the garden with her, she would have obeyed God. By the way, the serpent wasn’t a repulsive creature then. In fact, he was quite pleasant to look at and listen to. Eve knew that God only wanted the best for her and Adam, but the serpent’s job was to spoil that. He’s still spoiling it today in a variety of ways. How? A family is barely making ends meet, but the husband gets the urge for a new four-wheel-drive. He talks it over with his wife, and they agree that another note would be nearly impossible to handle. But then, guess who shows up? Why yes, it’s the serpent, but maybe he’s in the bodily form of a work buddy. The buddy says, “Hey man, you deserve that truck. You work hard, and hey, who wears the pants in your family anyway?” And so, the man buys into the lie, and buys a truck he can’t afford. Resentment builds in his marriage, and a truck, of all things, causes his marriage to end. What a sad situation for everyone except the truck salesman and Satan.
It doesn’t always amount to material things either. A happily married lady works with some women who are divorced, or well on the way to being divorced. They talk during breaks and at lunch. Every Tuesday and Thursday night, the women go out “with the girls”. And every week, they ask the happily married lady to go, and every week she tells them she has to get home and cook and do some cleaning. “Aw, come on with us tonight”, they plead. “You need a break from all of that slavery.” This goes on for weeks and months, along with the group’s constant assault on marriage and men in general. “Come on, it won’t kill you to get out”, they say. Gosh, doesn’t this sound sort of like, “You will not surely die.”? No, it didn’t kill the happily married lady to go out with the girls. It didn’t kill her to have a couple of “social” drinks and hang out. And it didn’t even kill her when she danced with a handsome stranger in the bar. And when the handsome stranger was no longer a stranger, she still didn’t die, but her marriage did. Once again, the serpent wins. We continue to fall for the lies that say, “If you only do this, you will be happy”. Isn’t it time to call the serpent a liar and walk away?