Genesis 3:14-15. 14The Lord God said to the serpent…15I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
It won’t be until the New Testament that we find out the serpent’s direct connection to Satan himself (Revelation calls Satan the “ancient serpent”). The serpent’s entrance into the garden brought the cosmic battle that had been fought in Heaven down to Earth. And that battle continues to this day. The battle between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman. All evil is the offspring of the serpent, and all humanity is the offspring of the woman.
Make no mistake, there is a power of evil alive in this world that is at war with God. And humans are the casualties of this war. Yes, sometimes this war is fought in extreme ways – demonic activity, Satan worship, witch covens, and ouija boards. But far more often, this battle is fought in the hearts of all mankind through the temptation, not to serve Satan, but to serve the self.
Typically, the voice of temptation does not come as the voice of evil. Satan came to Eve masked as God’s good creation (yes, God created snakes). The ordinary. The common. The everyday. These are the things that Satan uses to tempt us to doubt the goodness of God. He sows tiny seeds of mistrust in our hearts, often as we contemplate seemingly trivial things. In a world where God offers boundless supply, the serpent focuses on the one thing that God prohibits. And just as with God, he gets the woman to reveal her heart through questions (see Day 23).
Genesis 3:1. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
First, Satan uses God’s goodness to get the woman to question God’s goodness. Surely a good God, and God is good, wouldn’t withhold the final thing that would allow us to be like him. Plus, the fruit is a delight to look at and good for food. What’s the big deal? Why is God making an issue out of this one tree? That can’t be what he’s doing. Are you sure you understood God correctly? The original gaslighting.
Next, the serpent presents God as not only withholding the fruit from Eve, but also withholding the truth. When Eve recalls God saying that to eat from the Tree of Knowledge would bring about death. The serpent responds with these sinister words – you will not surely die.
Maybe God isn’t so good after all. Maybe I need to judge God. Maybe the Knowledge of Good and Evil will give me the neutral grounds I need for testing whether God is useful to me or not.
But as soon as we make this leap, we have abandoned faith in God.
God understood the risk that comes with giving us freedom. Freedom to choose means the possibility of choosing to disobey God, and the freedom to trust God must always stand beside the freedom to mistrust God. The serpent’s attacks are possible because of this freedom. This love. The same God that gives us all things freely to enjoy, also asks us to love and trust him even when he withholds something from us.
This is the ongoing battle that our freedom plus Satan’s deceptions about the ordinary, common, everyday world has created. But take heart for the war has already been won. The offspring of the woman has crushed the offspring of the serpent. The battle is no longer ours to win and lose as it was for Adam and Eve. Christ, the second Adam, has won. He stands victorious over all temptation in our place. As a result, every lie is exposed by the truth of Jesus. Every question is answered by the cross. And every temptation is escapable.
Questions: Where can you see Satan tempting you from within God’s good creation? What do you use to escape temptation? Is it the truth of Christ or something else?
To Live is Christ 