The Serpent and the Psychology of Temptation (Genesis 3:1–7)

Good morning. If I haven't met you or you have

forgotten me, which is you're probably better off for doing.

My name is Andrew. I'm on staff here at the church,

and I deeply love this church. But yeah, just as Cole had

mentioned, we're going to be back in Genesis after our Easter

sermon. So we're going to be in Genesis

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3, verses 1:00 to 6:00. So if you're an old school

person and you want to turn in there, there, if you don't

didn't bring your Bible, there's one in the Pew back in front of

you. But Genesis 31 to 6:00.

So just to reset the stage and to properly frame our minds,

we've been looking at Genesis not as a scientific textbook,

but as a theological textbook that shows us the why of God

creating everything that we see and all the people that we see.

We, we framed it that and each sermon is kind of built on this

foundation and then we have used it to prop up further sermons.

So this one today is going to be the same way.

This passage is going to lead us into future passages because

that's how texts work, right? There's going to be some things

in here that are going to lead us into further conversation

here in the coming weeks and months.

And so I'm going to tease those out.

I keep I keep getting all these like build up sermons.

I don't know why, but apparently that's that's my calling here.

I get to get to throw softball tosses up for somebody else to

do stuff anyway, which I like to do.

So there's some things that we nerd out on here and then

they're going to be some things that we're going to skip over a

little bit because what we're going to talk about next week

and the week after that is going to, it's just going to build up

and it's going to support the, the, the coming sermons.

But I'm excited about this passage One, because there's

some weird stuff in there. And if you know me, you know, I

like weird stuff in the Bible. Two, it shows us, as Cole

mentioned, this new character in the book of Genesis.

So we're 3 pages in to the book of Genesis and something pivots,

something changes. And So what I want to do this

morning is to show you the significance of this shift and

for us to have a proper understanding of what temptation

is. I think that's a word that we

use a lot. I'm being tempted for this, or

temptation exists in this realm of my life, or I only did it

because I was tempted. So I wanted to establish a firm

foundation and an understanding of what temptation is.

So that's one of my goals today. My second goal today is to show

you how Jesus is the only solution to overcoming

temptation. Those are my two goals.

That's what I've got for us this morning.

So if you were able, would you stand with me as we read the

Word of God? Genesis 3 One to six.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the

field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat

of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the

serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

But God said, You shall not eat of the tree, but the fruit of

the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that's in the

midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it, lest

you die. But the serpent said that the

woman you shall not surely die, For God knows that when you eat

of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God,

knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the

tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes,

and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she

took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her

husband Adam, who was with her, and he ate just the word of God.

Brothers and sisters, it is true and it is a good may be seated.

Father, I pray that you would help us this morning to

understand the gravity of temptation, that you would help

us to see that it sneaks in in subtle ways.

Sometimes it's overbearing. Sometimes we feel like we have

no power to resist temptation. That pray that you would help us

to see that you have equipped your people through the life of

your Son, Jesus, who overcame temptation, that we can overcome

temptation, that we can see the, the, the joy in fighting that

temptation. We're thankful that you've

brought us all here together. I don't, I don't know how

everyone's week has gone. I don't know the struggles of

everybody in this church. I know of some particular

struggles, some particular sorrows, but I'm thankful that

we're able to gather here together to read scripture

together, the sing together to be a part of the body of Christ

together. So it's in the powerful name of

Jesus that I'm thankful for this.

And it's in the powerful name of Jesus that I pray.

Amen. So if you've ever preached, have

you ever given the speech, one of the things that you're always

trying to think through is what is my zinger of an introduction

going to be? What what, what am I going to

talk to people about that's going to draw them?

And I was been thinking all week, what can I open this

sermon up with? And it finally happened on

Friday night. I finally got my intro to this

sermon into this passage. And shout out to the Cook family

and the Cruz family. We got to see the Pilgrims

Progress play that got put on. That was a lot of fun.

That was awesome. So shout out to Zane and Ray and

Mason and Olivia and Alana and Amanda who put in a lot of work

behind the scenes, literally and metaphorically.

But I was sitting through this play and I, let's tell you how

big of a homeschooled nerd I am. Pilgrim's Progress was the first

like actual word book that I read growing up.

So let's tell you a little bit about who I am.

But I was sitting through the, the play and I admitted to Will

and to Jay earlier. Like I, I cried a couple of

times. I'll, I'll be a man enough to

admit when I cry. You've probably seen me cry, but

there's a a part in the story of Pilgrim character.

This this is an allegory. His name gets changed to

Christian, but he winds up on his journey to the celestial

Kingdom. He winds up in a place called

Vanity Fair, winds up in the city where the city is just all

about trying to draw your attention away from your

journey, from wherever you came from to the celestial Kingdom.

All sorts of temptations, all sort, all of them pride, greed,

sexuality, all of these temptations exist in the city,

and they're trying to draw a Christian into their city.

He's just passing through. And our passage this morning is

showing us that temptation is something that exists to try to

draw our attention, to draw our affection away from the order

that God has created in his universe.

We've talked several times in the book of Genesis about God

ordering out the world. He separates things.

He puts things together. He separates man and then

creates woman and then brings woman and man back together.

So this book in these early chapters is about God ordering

things. Temptation for Adam and Eve was

about disorder and bringing disorder into God's good ordered

world. And it's the same for us today.

God has ordered things out and he's ordered our lives and how

we should function best. And the temptations that we

experience are little tugs on our hearts, on our minds, and on

our eyes to go into disorder. I think we can all agree that

disorder is bad, right? You look at your kitchen sink on

a Saturday night and you're like, got to wake up early for

church. But they're all these dishes in

my sink. That's a state of disorder.

Or you go into your kids bedroom one afternoon, you're like, what

in the world just happened in here?

This is a state of disorder. Or you look at your calendar,

you're like, oh man, I double booked myself or oh, I forgot

about this meeting or oh, I've got back-to-back to back events

with family and cousins and all this stuff.

It's a state of disorder. God did not create humans to

live in a state of disorder. He created them to live in his

perfectly good and beautiful and true ordered universe.

That's how he that's what he created man and woman for.

That's what he created humanity for was to live in a state of

order. Temptation, as we're going to

see, is the pull to disorder. And you can think about all

those, you know, playful illustrations I just gave.

But whenever your life is in disorder, do you feel joy?

Do you feel like you're flourishing and some sometimes

the disorder in our lives. We cannot control it's outside

forces bringing in disorder. God created this world good full

ordered temptation as we're going to see it from this new

character in the story is going to pull people into a state of

disorder. So I'm going to, if you give me

the time, I'm going to nerd out on a couple of things and then

we're going to talk about more what I think this passage is

actually talking about. So there's some interesting

things in here. Remember, we're not reading a

science book. This is not a biology class.

This is a theology class that we're in right now.

But we see this new character, the serpent.

Where did this joker come from? I want to nerd out more here,

but there's rumors about us starting a podcast up again, so

maybe I'll save this for later. But we got the serpent, an

animal, a Slytherin serpent, and he was more crafty than all the

other beasts of the field that the Lord God had made.

That's interesting. Why is there an emphasis put

here on this new character? Why?

Why is this detail given to us? OK, so you got to take your 21st

century North American mindset out of this equation here,

because we have to remember at the time that this was written

in the ancient Near East, things Telegraph to people differently

than they would Telegraph to us. And by that I mean sending a

signal. Oh, this word.

OK, that leads me to this understanding.

So we've got the serpent here, right?

And do you guys know, was Genesis written before Exodus?

No. So we've got God's people that

get rescued out of Exodus, and then we've got Moses recounting

all of these stories that have been passed down from generation

to generation and writing them down, codifying them.

And in the minds of the ancient Jewish person, there would have

been a lot of thought put towards the culture of Egypt.

Now that I learned this this week for the first time.

But a lot of ancient Egyptian rulers, they will wear crowns

that had serpents all on them. So a serpent as an image would

lead you to think a handful of things.

We'll go through just two diviners.

So someone who could take something and make it out of

nothing, or someone who could take an in an object and make it

a sacred object. Also, serpents were known as an

image, an icon, an idol for wisdom bringers.

That's pretty interesting. So we've got this serpent here.

He's not given a personal name. It's just nakash, which is the

Hebrew word for serpent or snake.

But that word also can be, it's kind of like a double entendre,

an animal serpent, snake, which whichever your preference is,

but also the shining one. So some scholars that I've

learned a lot from believe that this being right here, the

serpent, this nakash, this snake was a part of God's heavenly

host. But they were a divine throne

room, divine throne room guardian, which is which was

pretty common in the ancient Near Eastern world, that they

would have these Serpentine figures outside of their temples

or inside their temples or on their sacred items.

So the ancient mind would look at this and see this was someone

who is in rebellion against God, trying to lead other people into

rebellion against God. And that's definitely what we

have. So, you know, it's funny to joke

about, Oh, it was a talking snake.

That's funny. Did animals talk back in those

days? I don't know.

I'm looking forward to figuring that out one day.

But there's a lot going on here. And that God gave man the

mission, man and woman to subdue creation to make the rest of the

world look like the garden. OK, so that's one layer here.

Second layer is this is a spiritual being that Eve doesn't

seem shocked by a talking serpent.

So there, there's a layer here of there's probably some

familiarity with this serpent, probably seen him, maybe talk to

him a couple of times, knew what his job was.

There's that layer. And then there's the layer of

what God commanded Adam and Eve to not do.

And that's the focus of this passage.

They've got all this stuff to look at, all this stuff to eat,

all the stuff to enjoy. And we're focusing here now on

the one know that God had given them.

So we've got this serpent and that word crappy.

He's, he's wise, he's cunning, He knows how to lead you astray.

He knows what parts to poke you and to get you to be in

rebellion against God. Got that interesting stuff and

hear that word nakash. It's not a personal pronoun.

It's not a name, but the the New Testament authors associated

Satan, which is a, a proper name, a title with this.

So if you look at Revelation 12/7, that says now war arose in

heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon, and

the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated and

there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

And then the great dragon was thrown down.

Hold on that ancient serpent who was called the devil and Satan,

the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to earth and

his angels were thrown down with him.

And then later on in the Book of Revelation, we see and he sees

the dragon, the ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan and

bound him for 1000 years. So the New Testament authors,

they were picking up on the language here that we see in

Genesis, right? This is written in Greek,

Genesis written in Hebrew. But they were seeing the

imagery. They were seeing that this was

not just a a funny joke telling serpent.

This wasn't just an animal that learned how to talk.

You know, think of, I can't remember the snake's name, but

in Jungle Book, like you're just kind of, yeah, like it wasn't

just that it wasn't just like, oh, there's a giant snake in the

tree that talks. They were picking up on the fact

that this was a spiritual rebellion, that this was a

spiritual figure who was trying to lead other people in war

against God, the creator of the universe.

So what? What's the the end goal of the

serpent? What is what does this

conversation look like? Well, he says to the woman, did

God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

But here's the first part of temptation.

It will take truth and then it will distort it.

It's the serpent here with Eve is trying to say, trying to get

Eve to doubt the commands of God.

Did he actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the

garden? He's finding the he's using this

linguistic of seeing that he knows that God said there's one

tree that you can't eat of. And so he just kind of

nonchalantly like did he did he say you shouldn't eat of any

tree in the garden? This is God's perfect good

ordered garden given we've looked at how he given Adam and

Eve instructions on here's all the things you can eat from that

one over there is not what you can eat from right now.

If you do, you're going to die. But the serpent is trying to get

their minds all mingled and mushed up, and to try to

disorder the words of God and disorder the garden of God,

because God never said no trees. The temptation it it, it tries

to draw us into seeing beauty as ugly and ugly as beauty, seeing

truth as a lie and lie as the truth and goodness is bad and

vadnais is good. It tries to just change these

little pockets of our lives and draw us away from what God has

ordered. Why would the why would the

serpent do this? Why would this person, this

being that was created by God, who is wise and crafty and

cunning, why would this being want to mislead humans, God's

imagers? I have a theory on that.

We'll talk about it later. Actually, no, we're going to

talk about right now. This serpent, as we see, who is

referred to throughout the Old Testament in the two passages

that that I read from Revelation, seeks to destroy the

identity of humans. Seeks to destroy the image

bearingness of humans. He still can't.

But he wants you to distrust God, to be brought into a state

of disorder, for you to not understand that you are an

imager of God. That's what temptation is trying

to tell you is you. You're not an imager, so God's

withholding something from you. So you got to go and take it.

Then you can become like God, not just creating this image,

but you can become Co equal with the God who created all of us.

That's what temptation is, draws us into and tries to make us

believe. And the woman, she responds to

the serpent who is trying to get her to disbelieve all that God

has said, to disbelieve her identity.

She says, well, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the

garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree

that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch

it lest you die. Now here's an interesting thing.

What is Eve doing in this conversation?

Her mind's already getting distorted here.

She's adding things into what God had commanded her.

And Adam, God never said don't touch it.

He said don't eat of it. But now, even this conversation,

in this moment of temptation, she's adding words to what God

had commanded. And this is where my imagination

goes like this must have been an awesome tree to look at.

It must have been really cool or as Cole Cole would say, dope.

So God didn't say don't look at it.

Don't pretend like it's not there.

Don't pick up some of the leaves that have fallen.

He didn't say that. He said don't eat from it.

So the imagery here is that this is something that is true and

it's good and it's beautiful, but it's not for you to eat of

because God didn't want Adam and Eve just to try to source out

somewhere else for wisdom. But God was growing Adam and

Eve. He was the one raising them.

He was giving them wisdom. He was giving them knowledge.

But Eve is already starting to get her, her mind messed up in

this conversation with the serpent.

Serpent has already entered the the conversation and it's caused

Eve to start the spiral out of what truth is, what reality is,

what order is temptation. It's it seeks to lure us out of

what God has said is good into what we think is good, right?

It tries to pull us from this ordered good world to this

disordered chaotic world. And the serpent goes on.

He says you will surely not die, for God knows that when you eat

of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God,

knowing good and evil. So this is the other thing that

temptation tells us, that God is withholding something from us,

right? He doesn't want you to be wise.

He doesn't want you to know good and evil.

So you got to go and take it. You got to go and get what what

you want. Temptation tells us life is

hard, so what's just one more drink?

Temptation tells us I'm lonely, so what's just one more video

that I look at online? Temptation tells us I just hate

this person in my heart. I'm not committed an act of

violence against them, so it's OK, temptation says.

I can talk about this person behind their back, but long as

I'm not telling them these words in person, it's oh, it's OK,

temptation says. I'm coming home from work and

I'm tired and I want to be a lazy dad.

That's OK. It's just dad had a hard day.

Temptation just takes these good things and tries to spin it in a

way that we get entangled with it and use it in a bad way.

There's nothing wrong with having a drink.

There's nothing wrong with having hormones coursing through

your body and giving you sexual urges.

There's nothing wrong with being frustrated with someone.

There's nothing wrong with having thoughts about someone.

But it's what we do with those things.

Tation is trying to tell us, hey, it's OK, you know better

than God. God just trying to withhold

pleasure. He's trying to withhold joy.

He's trying to withhold wisdom and knowledge.

So just trying to find it your own way, trying to get it

quicker than what he's telling you.

You should have it on I and that's where I find myself.

I, I'm, I'm a good church boy royal ambassador.

If you want to know the royal ambassador pledge, I'll give it

to you later. Like, but it's really easy for

me. Like I've never, my sins are

ones that are easily hidden. I'm not like flagrantly sinned.

And that's what the serpent is trying to put in the eye in the

head of Eve and Adam. It's going to be all right.

Gosh, just trying to keep this from you.

Just just go and do it and see what happens.

It's what temptation tells us. It's going to be OK.

It's worth it in this moment. You're on a strict diet right

now, Andrew. But that fast food, man, those

golden arches, they call, they beckon your soul right in the

moment. Or as some of us dudes were

talking about earlier, of Taco Bell.

And it's kind of hit or miss sometimes and you get a bad Taco

Bell experience and like, I'm paying for it.

Then you get the good one. You're like, it is worth it.

But temptation is us trying to tell us that the steak that's

waiting at home is not as worthy of the Taco Bell on the drive

home. It's trying to rob us of joy,

everlasting pleasures at the right hand of Jesus.

And So what happens is Eve to say, no, that's a lie.

And you know, I was just thinking about this.

I think I got my facts incorrect in this conversation.

So no, I'm not doing it. God told me not to do it.

I've I've messed up on that little don't touch the tree

piece, but I'm I'm going to reject your truth claim because

I know the truth claim of the God who created me.

It would be awesome if she did. It'd be awesome if I did that as

well. But we are a lot more like Adam

and Eve than probably we would like to admit.

So the woman, after hearing all this from the serpent, she says

in her mind that this tree, it's good for food.

It was a delight to her eyes, and that the tree was desired to

make one wise. So she took of its fruit and ate

and we're 3 pages in the Bible and this is a heartbreaking

scene. Nothing but truth, beauty,

goodness has happened up until this point.

God has ordered out everything perfectly, and now Adam and Eve

buy into temptation, and they let them take it into a place

where they were never created to be.

So she ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with

her, and he ate. This is a pattern we'll see in

the Old Testament, but this language of seeing the lighting

and taking the couple of examples, we'll look at this one

in Genesis chapter 6. That'll be fun, where we see

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

another divine rebellion. Then we also see this with King

David. He sees Bathsheba, she's

pleasing to his eye. Then what does he do?

Takes her and it leads to murder of an innocent man.

You're right, we're going to see this play out throughout the

course of Genesis of people seeing the lighting in and

taking and, and just how that path leads to murder.

If you are not seeing God, the lighting in God and taking God

just the next page over, we're going to see more chaos, more

disorder that results from from this.

So what do we do with temptation, right?

Being tempted is not sinning, right?

Temptation leads to sin. So you're being drawn in to do

something that you know that God has said not to do.

It's the action of actually doing that thing that you were

being tempted to do, whether that be mentally, spiritually,

physically. So what do we do with

temptation? How do we overcome that?

Well, I've got bad news for you. First, you can't do it on your

own. I've tried.

You can't do it on your own. And before I was following

Jesus. You can't fight temptation.

You can't fight chaos. Got this serpent that Revelation

tells us is the one who is misleading the nation so it's

this chaos agent in God's ordered world.

How do I fight chaos on my own? I can't do it.

You can't do it you might like to think again.

I'm a good, good church boy, legalistic for most of my life.

And you think I can go to church enough?

I can read my Bible enough, I can pray out loud with people

enough. I can give the homeless person

on the street a couple of quarters.

I can, you know, help set up chairs.

I can do all these things and that that will help me fight

this chaos agent in my life. It doesn't work.

You can try to be the best mom in the world.

It's not going to work. You can try to be the best dad

or husband or uncle in the world, It's not going to work.

That doesn't help you repel temptation.

Even whenever you get rid of some of the vices in your life,

that temptation is still there, gnawing at the back of your

mind. So what do we do?

That's a good answer. The only answer I have for you

is to turn to Jesus because he's the only one who's ever overcome

temptation. Got 2 scenes that you probably

already know what I'm going to say.

And the liturgy already pointed to these, but the first one is

Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus in the desert.

So he's just been baptized and the the Greek word literally

means the Holy Spirit hurled Jesus out into this place of

chaos because the desert wasn't People look at that.

And we just view it as a place of chaos, place of the unknowns,

a place where things weren't flourishing.

So Jesus is hurled into the wilderness and who shows up on

the scene? The chaos agent shows up and

what does he do to Jesus? Temps him kind of similar to

what we've just seen here in Genesis 3.

Timson 3 times in Jesus, instead of what Eve and Adam did, Jesus

rebukes Satan and the way that he was trying to twist God's

word. He replies with the proper

application of God's Word. He replies with the proper words

of God's Word. Jesus did all of that.

He overcame temptation and he didn't do it just for himself.

Just even after like this this week or this past week of Holy

Week and thinking through all the things that Jesus endured,

all the things that Jesus did, all the things Jesus didn't do.

It's like, why am I worthy of receiving Jesus's report card?

It doesn't make sense to me, but for some reason it makes sense

to God. So we have Jesus overcoming

temptation and then we also see in the garden before Jesus was

led to the cross and beaten and tortured, we see him in this

moment of knowing I'm about to absorb all of God's wrath and

he's he says, instead of my will be done, he says your will be

done. Adam and Eve should have said,

hey serpent, it's not about our will, it's about the will of

God. But they gave in, but Jesus

didn't and he didn't do that just for him to look good.

He did that so that we through faith could be transformed from

the Kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light.

And so a practical application is just meditating on those two

passages whenever you're tempted.

Like Jesus overcame temptation for me to be changed, for me to

be transformed. Jesus prayed not my will,

Father, but your will be done. He prayed those prayers so that

you and I could be brought ends of the family of God.

And also just remember that temptation is sneaky like it.

It will creep up in places that you don't expect it to.

You might overcome 1 area of and defeat temptation 1 area.

And then next thing you know, it's creeping up to you.

That person really doesn't like you, or you should be more

valued than you are, or it's OK. It's just a little bit.

Temptation is sneaky. Be watchful, which is what Adam

and Eve should have been doing. Like, hey, talking snake over

here, he doesn't belong in here. He's trying to tell us to go

against God's word. Adam should have picked that

thing up and hurled him out of the garden.

They should have been watchful. So be watchful for temptation.

Then the last thing I have is just know that if you're a part

of this church, there are people who will walk arms with you and

warfare against temptation. Don't, don't keep it to

yourself. Let your fighter group know.

Let your community group know. Let your friend know.

Hey, I'm it just feels like this snake is just constantly in my

ear. I need help cutting the head off

of this thing. And then for that person to

remind you that Jesus has stomped the head of the serpent

on the cross and through his resurrection, Jesus holds the

keys to life, to death, and to hell.

Jesus wins. God, I thank you for what you're

doing in this church family. I thank you for people maybe who

are here for the first time or maybe you haven't been here for

a while, but I thank you that we've been able to come together

under the name of Jesus. It's not an accident that we are

here. All of us, one way or another,

are here because of Jesus. So I pray that as we continue to

reflect on Jesus's death and his resurrection, as we continue to

reflect on the truth of Scripture, I pray that it would

be joyful and that we'd be able to make a sweet sound that is

pleasing to your ears. And I love these people, and I'm

thankful that you love them more than I do because I'm going to

let them down one way or another.

But you never let your people down.

Adam and Eve let you down, but you didn't let them down.

It's in the Jesus name, I pray. Amen.

Let's stand in worship together.