Wednesday, February 16, 2011
“Ye shall be as gods…”
"And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4-5)
So far, we have seen the serpent misquoting God. Now we see him deliberately contradicting what God has said and simultaneously providing an alternative statement that he offers up as truth…"ye shall be as gods."
This "subtil" serpent (meaning clever and wily in the Hebrew use of the word) has drawn the woman's attention away from the deadly consequences of eating the fruit towards the deceptively attractive lure of being equal to God Himself. Very wily…and very evil.
In only two brief sentences, the serpent has caused the woman to consider as truth what is in fact deception: that Sin is not really bad and God is not really good.
If you are just reading the Bible for the first time, you won't have the advantage of knowing what the Bible says further along about this serpent, and about his motivations. So, I think this would be a good time to jump ahead a bit to explain more about this serpent and why he has such an interest in the woman.
To begin with, let's take a look at an angel by the name of Lucifer (Hebrew word heylel meaning: light-bearer, shining one, morning star):
Isaiah 14:12-15: "How have you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cast down on the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit."
Angels are quite obviously not men, they are angels; beings created by God for purposes other than that for which man was created. Yet, angels must also have "free will;" or in other words, the ability to choose to be obedient to God, their Creator, or to not be obedient. Lucifer, obviously, chose the latter; and the reason he did so was because of pride and lust for power and fame. He wanted to be just like GOD. And it was this sin of arrogance against the Most High God, his own Creator, that Isaiah prophecies will bring him out of the heavens straight into the pit of hell. WARNING: If the sin of pride can happen to an angel who is in the very presence of God, how much more vulnerable is man to this sin and its disastrous consequences? This would be a good time for us to search our own hearts, asking the Lord to help reveal pride in us if it is, in fact, there; and then asking Him to forgive us as we repent of it.
As you can see from what the serpent is saying to the woman in the garden, the serpent has that same mentality of Lucifer that motivates him to cause the woman to doubt, then leads her astray and actually toward disobedience, which is sin, and toward the consequences of that sin, which is death.
So what is the tie-in between the serpent and Lucifer? Well, it must be one of two things.
Either the serpent is Lucifer, an angel who is able to transform himself into a serpent or into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14) when in fact he has lost his standing as a beautiful angel (an angel that left his God-given place Jude 1:6) and is now full of darkness and wickedness; now known as Satan (meaning adversary, enemy, one who withstands Luke 10:18).
OR, if he didn't actually transform himself into the serpent, he at least inhabited (or controlled the mind and/or body of) the serpent.
In either case, the motivation is the same…to cause the woman to doubt the word of God, to then help her to "reason" her way around God's command, and to show her the "benefits" of sin. All lies and deception!
The same thing we fall for today, is it not?
We'll continue tomorrow with the results of the serpent's conversation with the woman in the garden.
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2 comments:
She doesn’t call the tee of the knowledge of good and evil by its proper name and only gives a general location of its whereabouts within the garden. She misrepresents what will happen if her and Adam eats or touches the fruit. Why is this?
Could it be that Adam has embellished what God stated to ensure she stays away? Kind of like what parents do with children when they exaggerate the outcome of a situation to a small child to get them to not do something, or to lessen what they do (i.e. watch too much television and your brain will turn to mush.) Maybe being the newest creation to the garden, Adam knew she could be easily influenced. Maybe, Adam himself had already been approached by the serpent and knew his cunning ways (of course if this were true, you would have to believe Adam would have warned Eve to stay away from or not trust the words of the serpent.) In any event, we are left with two scenarios, either Adam embellished God’s instructions to Eve , or Eve wasn’t paying close attention to the instructions that Adam spoke, just as she likely would have had had the words would have come from God’s mouth.
So, we are left with the talking, cunning serpent, who sees the opportunity to infect God’s perfect garden with death…what better way than to approach the weakest individual of the two. Who would you approach? The weaker of the two; the one who had not hear the warning from God himself, but from man. Am I transferring the blame from Eve to Adam? No. They both are accountable. I would hope walking in the garden daily with God, speaking personally every day, hearing him audibly, instead of what we do today, I believe I would refrain from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (but can we really say we would?).
We have to ask this question, why did God allow the serpent to slither his way throughout the garden, with the knowledge that the serpent would tempt Eve and then she Adam and the garden would be sealed off forever and they separated from God? God knew the outcome. Was the purpose only to test his creations? GW
That last is a question that has been asked over and over again through the ages, I'll bet. But you are right that God did know the outcome and He allowed it to happen anyway. Some take this to view God as cruel. But those, like you, who know God more intimately, because you have spent much time in His Word getting to know who He is, know that all that He does or even allows is from a heart filled with both love and justice. If the angels have free will, just as man does, then He would not hinder the angels from being rebellious, as Lucifer was, anymore than he would hinder man from being rebellious if man so chooses...that's what free will is...total freedom to do right or wrong...as both the man and woman in the garden displayed for us all to see. That doesn't mean either angels or man HAVE to be rebellious, but it does mean we can choose our path. We just have to be prepared to face the consequences of God's justice when we turn away from what God has given to us in His love. If we choose the path to hell, He will not prevent it, although He always offers a way of escape....as He has done with His only Son, Jesus Christ...our way of escape from the consequences of our own sins. We can choose rebellion, or we can choose liberty in Christ. Thank God for His great love that offers us that choice!
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